[thelist] trouble w/ JOINs in an Oracle query

[Jeremy Weiss]

I'm baaaack, and need help with another query, please.

Before you see the query know that
1) I didn't write it, just modified it
2) I'm still working on my formatting convention a bit, sorry if
there's too many tabs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SELECT
	To_Char(CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.STARTED,'YYYY-MM') AS STARTMONTH
,	Sum(CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.TOTALTIME) AS SUMOFTOTALTIME
FROM
	CORR.USERS INNER JOIN
		(
			(
				(
					CORR.WORKORDERSQUAWKS INNER JOIN CORR.WORKORDERITEMS
					ON CORR.WORKORDERSQUAWKS.ITEMKEY = CORR.WORKORDERITEMS.ITEMKEY
				) INNER JOIN CORR.WORKORDERCUSTOMERS
				ON CORR.WORKORDERITEMS.WORKORDERKEY = CORR.WORKORDERCUSTOMERS.WORKORDERKEY
			) INNER JOIN CORR.WORKORDERLABOR
			ON CORR.WORKORDERSQUAWKS.SQUAWKKEY = CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.SQUAWKKEY
		)
		ON CORR.USERS.USERKEY = CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.PERFORMEDBYKEY
WHERE
	To_Char(CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.STARTED, 'YYYY-MM') >=  '2009-01' AND
	To_Char(CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.STARTED, 'YYYY-MM') <=  '2009-09' AND
	CORR.USERS.DEPARTMENTKEY = $deptkey AND
	CORR.WORKORDERITEMS.COSTWORKORDERCUSTOMER LIKE  '%$customername%'
GROUP BY
	CORR.USERS.DEPARTMENTKEY
,	To_Char(CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.STARTED, 'YYYY-MM');
ORDER BY
	To_Char(CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.STARTED,'YYYY-MM') ";
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The above query works great except that it only returns rows when both
columns exist, as it rightly should since it's an INNER JOIN. However,
I need it to return all columns where STARTMONTH exists even if there
aren't any matching entries CORR.WORKORDERLABOR.TOTALTIME. For
example, the current query returns something like:

2009-1|39
2009-3|42

And I'm wanting:

2009-1|39
2009-2|
2009-3|42

I think all I need to do is change a JOIN, but thus far I haven't
managed to get that to work. I've rewritten the FROM clause in quite a
few different ways, changing the order of the tables, trying various
JOIN types, etc. and still haven't been able to get the results I
need. Someone, please save my sanity. ;)

Thanks,
Jeremy