What is the difference between LATERAL and a subquery in PostgreSQL?

Question

Since Postgres came out with the ability to do LATERAL joins, I\'ve been reading up on it, since I currently do complex data dumps for my team with lots of inef

Answer 1

The difference between a non-lateral and a lateral join lies in whether you can look to the left hand table's row. For example:

select  *
from    table1 t1
cross join lateral
        (
        select  *
        from    t2
        where   t1.col1 = t2.col1 -- Only allowed because of lateral
        ) sub

This "outward looking" means that the subquery has to be evaluated more than once. After all, t1.col1 can assume many values.

By contrast, the subquery after a non-lateral join can be evaluated once:

select  *
from    table1 t1
cross join
        (
        select  *
        from    t2
        where   t2.col1 = 42 -- No reference to outer query
        ) sub

As is required without lateral, the inner query does not depend in any way on the outer query. A lateral query is an example of a correlated query, because of its relation with rows outside the query itself.