Simulating an outer join

I have been thinking about how to simulate an outer join. It seems the
best way is to do:

SELECT tab1.col1, tab2.col3
FROM tab1, tab2
WHERE tab1.col1 = tab2.col2
UNION ALL
SELECT tab1.col1, NULL
FROM tab1
WHERE tab1.col1 NOT IN (SELECT tab2.col2 FROM tab2)

Comments? I know someone was asking about this recently.

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