Re: outer join question

Brian Peasland wrote:
>
> In your example above, you have a right outer join. If you want this to
> be a left outer join, use the following:
>
> where a.id = b.id (+)
>
> Notice the outer join operator. This is basically indicating which table
> will not necessarily have matching rows and Oracle will have to supply
> more information...in the form of NULL values.
>
> IMO, this is where the LEFT|RIGHT|FULL OUTER JOIN ANSI syntax is easier
> to read than Oracle's old-style (+) operator.

By a country mile!

A separate syntax for joins, which also enforces a much stricter concept of joining is one of the better things in ANSI sql, IMHO.

The "old way" is just a grab-bag of equality tests.

   BugBear Received on Tue Aug 21 2007 - 03:54:40 CDT