SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views

I recently received an email that contains a question from one of my readers. I have already replied the answer to his email, but I would still like to bring it to your attention and ask if you think I could have done any better with the example I gave.

The question was raised when the email sender read the white paper, Improving Performance with SQL Server 2008 Indexed Views. If you scroll all the way down through the said white paper, there are several questions and answers.

Q: Why can’t I use OUTER JOIN in an Indexed view?

A: Rows can logically disappear from an Indexed view based on OUTER JOIN when you insert data into a base table. This makes the OUTER JOIN view to be increasingly updated, which is relatively difficult to implement. In addition, the performance of the implementation would be slower than for views based on standard (INNER) JOIN.

The reader was confused with my answer and wanted me to explain it further. Here is the example which I have quickly put together to demonstrate the behavior described in the above statement.
USE tempdb
GO
-- Create Two Tables
CREATE TABLE BaseTable (ID1 INT, Col1 VARCHAR(100))
CREATE TABLE JoinedTable (ID2 INT, Col2 VARCHAR(100))
GO
-- Insert Values in Tables
INSERT INTO BaseTable (ID1,Col1)
SELECT 1,'First'
UNION ALL
SELECT 2,'Second'
GO
INSERT INTO JoinedTable (ID2,Col2)
SELECT 1,'First'
UNION ALL
SELECT 2,'Second'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3,'Third'
UNION ALL
SELECT 4,'Fourth'
GO
-- Use Outer Join
SELECT jt.*
FROM BaseTable bt
RIGHT OUTER JOIN JoinedTable jt ON bt.ID1 = jt.ID2
WHERE bt.ID1 IS NULL
GO


The script above will give us the following output:

-- Now Insert Rows in Base Table
INSERT INTO BaseTable (ID1,Col1)
SELECT 3,'Third'
GO
-- You will notice that one row less retrieved from Join
SELECT jt.*
FROM BaseTable bt
RIGHT OUTER JOIN JoinedTable jt ON bt.ID1 = jt.ID2
WHERE bt.ID1 IS NULL
GO
-- Clean up
DROP TABLE BaseTable
DROP TABLE JoinedTable
GO


After running this script, you will notice that as the base table gains one row, the result loses one row. Going back to the white paper mentioned earlier, I believe this is expensive to manage for the same reason why it is not allowed in Indexed View.

Let me know if you have a better example to demonstrate this behavior in the Outer Join.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)