FULL OUTER JOIN vs. FULL JOIN

Actually they are the same. LEFT OUTER JOIN is same as LEFT JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN is same as RIGHT JOIN. It is more informative way to compare from INNER Join.

See this Wikipedia article for details.

Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 uses these SQL-92 keywords for outer joins specified in a FROM clause:

• LEFT OUTER JOIN or LEFT JOIN

• RIGHT OUTER JOIN or RIGHT JOIN

• FULL OUTER JOIN or FULL JOIN

From MSDN

The full outer join or full join returns all rows from both tables, matching up the rows wherever a match can be made and placing NULLs in the places where no matching row exists.