Filtering using the JOIN instead of WHERE

Question

In SQL (MSSQL, Oracle, etc., whatever), when joining tables, what is the gain from adding a filter to the JOIN statement instead of having it in the WHERE clause?

i.

Answer 1

These syntaxes are synonymous and are optimized to the same thing by most RDBMS.

I usually prefer this syntax:

SELECT  *
FROM    X
INNER JOIN
        Y
ON      X.A = Y.A
WHERE   X.B = 'SOMETHING'

when B is not a part of the logical link between A and B, and this one:

SELECT  *
FROM    X
INNER JOIN
        Y
ON      X.A = Y.A
        AND X.B = 'SOMETHING'

when it is.