When should I use cross apply over inner join?

Question

What is the main purpose of using CROSS APPLY?

I have read (vaguely, through posts on the Internet) that cross apply can be more efficient when selectin

Answer 1

This has already been answered very well technically, but let me give a concrete example of how it's extremely useful:

Lets say you have two tables, Customer and Order. Customers have many Orders.

I want to create a view that gives me details about customers, and the most recent order they've made. With just JOINS, this would require some self-joins and aggregation which isn't pretty. But with Cross Apply, its super easy:

SELECT *
FROM Customer
CROSS APPLY (
  SELECT TOP 1 *
  FROM Order
  WHERE Order.CustomerId = Customer.CustomerId
  ORDER BY OrderDate DESC
) T