Will ANSI JOIN vs. non-ANSI JOIN queries perform differently?

Question

I have my business-logic in ~7000 lines of T-SQL stored procedures, and most of them has next JOIN syntax:

SELECT A.A, B.B, C.C
FROM aaa AS A, bbb AS B, ccc          


        

Answer 1

ANSI syntax does enforce neither predicate placement in the proper clause (be that ON or WHERE), nor the affinity of the ON clause to adjacent table reference. A developer is free to write a mess like this

SELECT
   C.FullName,
   C.CustomerCode,
   O.OrderDate,
   O.OrderTotal,
   OD.ExtendedShippingNotes
FROM
   Customer C
   CROSS JOIN Order O
   INNER JOIN OrderDetail OD
      ON C.CustomerID = O.CustomerID
      AND C.CustomerStatus = 'Preferred'
      AND O.OrderTotal > 1000.0
WHERE
   O.OrderID = OD.OrderID;

Speaking of query tools who "will generate ANSI-92", I'm commenting here because it generated

SELECT 1
   FROM DEPARTMENTS C
        JOIN EMPLOYEES A
             JOIN JOBS B
     ON C.DEPARTMENT_ID = A.DEPARTMENT_ID
     ON A.JOB_ID = B.JOB_ID

The only syntax that escapes conventional "restrict-project-cartesian product" is outer join. This operation is more complicated because it is not associative (both with itself and with normal join). One have to judiciously parenthesize query with outer join, at least. However, it is an exotic operation; if you are using it too often I suggest taking relational database class.