RIGHT JOIN (RIGHT OUTER JOIN)

The mirror image of LEFT JOIN. Returns all rows from the right table, plus matching rows from the left. Non-matching left-side columns become NULL.

SELECT e.name, d.dept_name
FROM employees e
RIGHT JOIN departments d ON e.dept_id = d.dept_id;

• Finance appears even though no employee belongs to it. It is in the right table (departments), so it is always included.
• Carol and David do not appear — they are in the left table and have no match in the right table.
• NULL in name means “this department has no assigned employees.”

RIGHT JOIN is rarely needed. Any RIGHT JOIN can be rewritten as a LEFT JOIN by swapping the table order:

-- These two queries produce identical results:
SELECT e.name, d.dept_name
FROM employees e RIGHT JOIN departments d ON e.dept_id = d.dept_id;

-- Equivalent LEFT JOIN (more readable):
SELECT e.name, d.dept_name
FROM departments d LEFT JOIN employees e ON e.dept_id = d.dept_id;