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Posted by Mladen Gogala on 06/13/43 11:46
On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:42:03 -0400, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> Maybe because the "rules of elements" don't allow all possibilities?
>
> For instance - try this. List all records in table A, along with their matching
> records in table B if those records exist. Impossible without a Union, but very
> easy with a LEFT OUTER JOIN.
My preferred garden variety of databases (Oracle) has a syntax extension
(+) for such cases. I find it to be much more understandable. In addition
to that, internally the database does perform a union, it only uses the
syntax to hide it.
>
> There is minimal additional overhead to the JOIN syntax method. And much more
> flexibility. Additionally, you only need to learn one basic syntax for all JOIN
> cases.
Unfortunately, it makes the whole thing much less understandable and much
less aesthetic. Here is the aesthetic problem:
SELECT * FROM
emp e JOIN dept d ON e.deptno=d.deptno
What is the result of that join? Rows form EMP? Rows from DEPT?
Rows from both? It turns out that it is rows from both. It doesn't even
save much space:
SELECT ename,job,dname,loc
FROM emp e,dept d
WHERE e.deptno=d.deptno
The statement above performs the same thing as the statement using the
ANSI join. Saving space is especially dubious if we need an outer join.
The statement
SELECT ename,job,dname,loc FROM
emp e RIGHT OUTER JOIN dept d ON e.deptno=d.deptno
gives exactly the same result as
SELECT ename,job,dname,loc
FROM emp e,dept d
WHERE e.deptno(+)=d.deptno
The second SQL is much more clear, logical and pleasing to the eye.
Every database has its own syntax for outer joins. Database optimizers are
finely tuned to its own syntax and usually have many more problems (and
related bugs) with ANSI joins then with the usual, mathematically logical
ones. In mathematical terms, "relation" is a subset of Cartesian product.
Any subset. That means that we get to pick the elements of Cartesian
product that we want in our relation. You can put even further conditions
on relations. If the presence of pair (a,b) in the relation means that the
pair (b,a) is not in the relation and the presence of pairs (a,b) and
(b,c) implies the presence of the pair (a,c) then we are talking about the
ordering relation. That can be refined further into strict ordering and
well ordered sets (every set can be well ordered, provided we accept so
called "axiom of choice", but that's slightly, just slightly, outside the
scope of PHP group). That is the notation I love and understand. ANSI
joins are ugly, support the dangerous illusion about "portable database
applications" and make the statement much likely to encounter a bug in the
database code. To make long story short, I hate ANSI joins, with passion.
--
http://www.mgogala.com
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