What is the role of the JOIN operator in working with databases?

The JOIN operator in SQL is used to combine rows from two or more tables based on a related column between them. This allows for retrieving combined data from different tables, which is important for normalized databases.

Example: if there is a users table and an orders table, you can use JOIN to get a list of users along with their orders.

SELECT users.name, orders.product
FROM users
JOIN orders ON users.id = orders.user_id;

Thus, JOIN helps to connect data and extract comprehensive information from multiple tables.