`join` isn't so bad -- you are connecting two tables based on a common value. If you have `person` and `address`: create table person ( id serial

`join` isn't so bad -- you are connecting two tables based on a common value. If you have `person` and `address`: create table person ( id serial primary key, first_name text not null, last_name text not null, date_of_birth date not null ); create table address ( id serial primary key, person_id integer not null references person (id), street_number text not null, apartment_number text, city text not null, state text, postal_code text not null ); Then you'd join using `person.id` to `address.person_id`. An inner join hides rows from the joining table if there is no corresponding row in the joined-to table, while an outer join includes rows from the joining table if there are no corresponding rows in the joined-to table. If we've got: insert into person (first_name, last_name, date_of_birth) values ('Brian', 'Kernighan', '1950-01-01'), -- gets id 1 ('Dennis', 'Ritchie', '1948-01-01'); -- gets id 2 insert into address (person_id, street_number, city, postal_code) values (1, '123 Main St.', 'Berkeley', '94701'); Then these two queries will return one and two rows, respectively: -- an inner join, only returns `person` rows with a corresponding -- row in the `address` table select person.first_name, person.last_name, address.street_number, address.city, address.postal_code from person inner join address on person.id = address.person_id -- output: -- first_name | last_name | street_number | city | postal_code -- Brian | Kernighan | 123 Main St. | Berkeley | 94701 -- a left outer join, returns all `person` rows, regardless of -- the existence of a corresponding row in the `address` table select person.first_name, person.last_name, address.street_number, address.city, address.postal_code from person left outer join address on person.id = address.person_id -- output: -- first_name | last_name | street_number | city | postal_code -- Brian | Kernighan | 123 Main St. | Berkeley | 94701 -- Dennis | Ritchie | | | One important thing to know is if you are joining to multiple tables, and there are multiple corresponding rows (i.e., a `favorite_food` table with three rows per person, and a `favorite_color` table with three rows per person), you will get _multiplicative_ data -- `n_favorite_foods * n_favorite_colors` rows will be returned per person! This is where things like `group by` and `distinct` come into play. There are other types of joins, but these two are the usual suspects in most queries.