Oracle syntax left joins three or more tables

Question

I am trying to wrap my head around the old oracle Left Join syntax. It\'s fine with two tables:

FROM A, B
WHERE
A.Col = B.Col (+)

(Lets cal

Answer 1

You can see it in a cascading way. However, the key is to look for those tables which are left and right joined within the same query. In this case, the order is different: the condition where the table is right joined is applied first. I hope the following diagram will shed some light on this:

You can also check the order of these joins by looking at the execution plan of the query:

For Q1:

select a.c a, b.c b, c.c c   from a, b, c  where a.c = b.c (+)    and
c.c = a.c (+)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation           | Name | E-Rows |  OMem |  1Mem | Used-Mem |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT    |      |        |       |       |          |
|*  1 |  HASH JOIN OUTER    |      |      4 |  2168K|  2168K|  805K (0)|
|*  2 |   HASH JOIN OUTER   |      |      4 |  2616K|  2616K|  981K (0)|
|   3 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL| C    |      4 |       |       |          |
|   4 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL| A    |      4 |       |       |          |
|   5 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL | B    |      4 |       |       |          |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

For Q2:

select a.c a, b.c b, c.c c   from a, b, c  where c.c = a.c (+)    and
a.c = b.c (+)

------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Id  | Operation           | Name | E-Rows |  OMem |  1Mem | Used-Mem |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
|   0 | SELECT STATEMENT    |      |        |       |       |          |
|*  1 |  HASH JOIN OUTER    |      |      4 |  2168K|  2168K|  801K (0)|
|*  2 |   HASH JOIN OUTER   |      |      4 |  2616K|  2616K|  983K (0)|
|   3 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL| C    |      4 |       |       |          |
|   4 |    TABLE ACCESS FULL| A    |      4 |       |       |          |
|   5 |   TABLE ACCESS FULL | B    |      4 |       |       |          |
------------------------------------------------------------------------