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Joining Tables
completed on 24/6/2024, 1:10:02
1 Countries + Geoloc
Let's start by joining the countries and geoloc tables. The geoloc table has latitude and longitude
values for the center of each country.
Enter the following NATURAL JOIN query to see how it combines the data into a single table:
SELECT * FROM countries NATURAL JOIN geoloc
ccd country continent population area latitude longitude
AD Andorra Europe 77000 468 42.5462 1.6015
AE United Arab Emira Asia 9631000 83600 23.424 53.8478
AF Afghanistan Asia 37172000 652090 33.9391 67.7099
AG Antigua and BarbuNorth America 96000 442 17.0608 -61.7964
AI Anguilla North America 15000 96 18.2205 -63.0686
Correct!
2 Southern Hemisphere
For each country, we now have all the columns from both tables. Awesome! This works because
NATURAL JOIN is able to use the ccd column to match up the two tables.
In the results tab, switch over to picture mode and notice that all countries are selected. Let's add a
WHERE clause to select only the countries that are south of the equator. In other words, countries
where latitude < 0.
Interesting! The equator looks off balance without showing Antarctica.
3 Eastern Countries
How would you select all the countries east of the prime meridian?
1 SELECT * FROM countries NATURAL JOIN geoloc
2 WHERE longitude > 0
Correct!
4 Coastal Countries
Now let's join countries with the coastlines tables.
Write a query to select only the countries that have a coastline greater than 0.
1 SELECT * FROM countries NATURAL JOIN coastlines
2 WHERE coast_km > 0
Correct!
5 Different Column Names
The NATURAL JOIN clause is easy to use, but it only works if the corresponding columns are
named the same in both tables.
Take a look at the shapes and the perimeters tables. Notice that the IDs are called id in the shapes
table, but are called shape_id in the perimeters table.
Since the columns have different names, the natural join will not work the way we want. Try it out and
see what happens:
id shape color dots xloc yloc scale shape_id perimeter
0 circle orange 5 420 100 0.6 0 226
0 circle orange 5 420 100 0.6 1 469
0 circle orange 5 420 100 0.6 2 557
0 circle orange 5 420 100 0.6 3 332
0 circle orange 5 420 100 0.6 4 188
Boom! Notice the explosion of shape rows.
6 Basic JOIN
Since the key column names are different, the NATURAL JOIN didn't know how to match rows. As a
result, it matched everything to everything, meaning it matched every column in the first table with
every column in the second table creating a very large table. This result is called a CROSS JOIN
and it's not what we want here.
We want each shape to line up with its corresponding perimeter. To do this, we need to use a basic
JOIN clause and explicitly state which columns to equate using the ON keyword like this:
SELECT * FROM shapes JOIN perimeters ON id=shape_id
Try it and compare the output to the previous result:
id shape color dots xloc yloc scale shape_id perimeter
0 circle orange 5 420 100 0.6 0 226
1 square blue 3 -400 -100 1.2 1 469
2 star red 2 0 0 0.7 2 557
3 heart blue 2 -300 100 0.8 3 332
4 circle red 6 -500 20 0.5 4 188
Correct!
7 Large Perimeters
Let's create a picture using this basic JOIN.
Write a query to select the shapes that have a perimeter greater than 400.
Correct!
8 Compare and Contrast
To capture what we learned here, write some notes to describe the similarities and differences
between a NATURAL JOIN and a basic JOIN.
