Like many people, SQL was my go-to tool for joining different datasets and other database queries. Now that I have been exposed to Alteryx through my training at the Data School Down Under, I was surprised to find out that joins and unions in Alteryx was much more intuitive, powerful and just makes more sense. There are some differences however between Alteryx and SQL joins, so I have created this guide to prevent the misinterpretation of data in Alteryx caused by old SQL habits.
| Join | SQL | Alteryx |
| Inner Join
|
SELECT * FROM table A
INNER JOIN table B ON … |
 |
Left Join |
SELECT * FROM table A
LEFT JOIN table B ON … |
 |
Right Join |
SELECT * FROM table A
RIGHT JOIN table B ON … |
 |
Full Join |
SELECT * FROM table A
LEFT JOIN table B ON … UNION ALL SELECT * FROM table A RIGHT JOIN table B ON … UNION ALL SELECT * FROM table A INNER JOIN table B ON … |
 |
Left Outer Join |
SELECT * FROM table A
LEFT JOIN table B ON … WHERE table B.keyfield is NULL |
 |
Right Outer Join |
SELECT * FROM table A
RIGHT JOIN table B ON … WHERE table A.keyfield is NULL |
 |
That is all for now and I hope this guide proves useful.
Happy Joining!
