SQLite3 Simulate RIGHT OUTER JOIN with LEFT JOINs and UNION

Question

I have the following select statement where I need to sum each task from table tbTasks and group them by projectId from table tbProjects in order to get a record like this:

ProjectID = 1, ProjectName = 'My Project', TotalTime = 300 //<--sum of each task time

The query looks like this:

SELECT tbTasks.projectId, 
       SUM(tbTasks.taskTime) AS totalTime, 
       tbProjects.projectName 
FROM tbTasks 
    INNER JOIN tbProjects ON tbTasks.projectId = tbProjects.projectId 
GROUP BY tbTasks.projectId 
ORDER BY tbProjects.created DESC

This works and executes fine but with one problem, if a project has no task associated with it, then I get no record back at all (where I want to get projectId, projectName, and 0 or NULL for totalTime). So, in order to right join on the table tbProjects SQLite3 forces me to do it in a round-about way.

SELECT tbTasks.projectId, 
       SUM(tbTasks.taskTime) AS totalTime, 
       tbProjects.projectName 
FROM tbTasks LEFT OUTER JOIN tbProjects
       ON tbTasks.projectId = tbProjects.projectId 
GROUP BY tbTasks.projectId 
UNION 
SELECT tbProjects.projectId, 
       SUM(tbTasks.taskTime) AS totalTime, 
       tbProjects.projectName   
FROM tbProjects LEFT OUTER JOIN tbTasks 
      ON tbProjects.projectId = tbTasks.projectId 
GROUP BY tbTasks.projectId 
ORDER BY tbProjects.created DESC

Only this does not work, I get an SQL syntax error. What am I doing wrong? Is there a better way to achieve my goal?

Answer 1

Even though SQLite hasn't implemented RIGHT OUTER or FULL OUTER , it does have LEFT OUTER JOIN , which should do what you'd like. Just have tbProjects be on the left.

SELECT tbProjects.projectId, 
       COALESCE(SUM(tbTasks.taskTime), 0) AS totalTime, 
       tbProjects.projectName 
FROM tbProjects
    LEFT OUTER JOIN tbTasks ON tbProjects.projectId = tbTasks.projectId
GROUP BY tbProjects.projectId 
ORDER BY tbProjects.created DESC

You get NULLS in totalTime for projects that don't have any tasks, and the call to COALESCE() replaces the null with a 0 .