nope

the use of left or right determines which side of the join returns all results

my example is clearly a left outer join

if this were right outer then the results would be different

i would be asking for "show me all employeesand the name of the person they manage - include all people that do no manage anyone"

.eg

select e1.*,e2.name from employee e1 left outer join employee e2 on e1.managerid=e2.employeeid

assume "maggie os" has no manager and "paul smith" manages no-one

returns (example data)

Name id active manager

john smith 1 1 fred jones

abe lincoln 2 1 fred jones

maggie os 3 1 NULL

paul smith 4 1 fred jones

.......

select e1.*,e2.name from employee e1 RIGHT outer join employee e2 on e1.managerid=e2.employeeid

returns (example data)

Name id active manager

john smith 1 1 fred jones

abe lincoln 2 1 fred jones

NULL NULL NULL Paul Smith

Paul Smith 4 1 fred jones