In what order does execution on WHERE and ON clauses work?

Question

I was reading this page about APPLY:

http://sqlblog.com/blogs/alexander_kuznetsov/archive/2009/07/07/using-cross-apply-to-optimize-joins-on-between-conditions.aspx

Answer 1

The second query is faster why you are limiting the scope of the join.

First query: A join B

Second query: A join subset(B)

As subset(B) < B itself there are a lot less matches to scan for.

And that leads to the question: the column used in that join got a index? (Probably not or the speeds cannot differ a lot)