Check using clause columns

Reports columns in the USING clause that does not exist in both tables.

Example (MySQL):

CREATE TABLE t1 (i INT, j INT);
CREATE TABLE t2 (k INT, l INT);
SELECT * FROM t1 JOIN t2 USING (j);

In USING clauses, a column name must be present in both tables, and the SELECT query will automatically join those tables by using the given column name. As we do not have the j column in t2, we can rewrite the query using ON. The ON clause can join tables where the column names do not match in both tables.

SELECT * FROM t1 JOIN t2 ON t1.j = t2.l;

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

SqlCheckUsingColumns

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | SQL

Inspection ID: SqlCheckUsingColumnsInspection

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection SqlCheckUsingColumns

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	CLion 2026.1, DataGrip 2026.1, DataSpell 2026.1, GoLand 2026.1, IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1, JetBrains Rider 2025.3, PhpStorm 2026.1, PyCharm 2026.1, Qodana for .NET 2025.3, Qodana for Go 2026.1, Qodana for JS 2026.1, Qodana for JVM 2026.1, Qodana for PHP 2026.1, Qodana for Ruby 2026.1, RubyMine 2026.1, WebStorm 2026.1

Last modified: 31 March 2026