If you’ve defined joins for any length of time, you’re likely familiar with left, inner and full joins, and perhaps even right joins (opposite of a left join). But these aren’t the only kinds of joins out there. There are several others which, while their names may not be as familiar, still have practical applications for real-life business scenarios. Let’s explore several of these, including how to do them in Power Query!
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Deep Dive Into Joins (Part 1): Join vs. Nested Join
If you’ve used Power Query for any length of time, you almost certainly have joined tables together. Joins are a common operation—and one with various details and options to be explored. Let’s take a few posts to look into some of these interesting areas!
Our focus will be topics specific to how Power Query implements joins, as well as some lesser-known general concepts. We’ll assume that you already have a grasp of commonly-known, non-Power Query specific join basics, like the difference between left, right, inner and full joins. (If such fundamentals are a bit fuzzy, when you bump into a head-scratching part in this series, it might be good to do an online search as a refresher.)
Series Index
- Deep Dive Into Joins (Part 1): Join vs. Nested Join [this post]
- Deep Dive Into Joins (Part 2): Not So Common, But Real-World Useful
First up: Power Query’s Two Main Approaches to Performing Joins
Maybe you’ve used query editor to “Merge queries.” Perhaps you’ve hand-crafted the equivalent in M code. In either case, the code that’s created invokes Table.NestedJoin. But nested joins aren’t the only option for joining data in Power Query. The main alternative is the lesser-known Table.Join.
What are some of the differences between these two functions?
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