What is the difference between Cartesian product and cross join?

Question

I am working on SQL Server 2008, and wanted to know about what is the differnce between Cartesian Product and Cross Join. Can somebody please help me to clear the concept?

Answer 1

Both the joins give same result. Cross-join is SQL 99 join and Cartesian product is Oracle Proprietary join.

A cross-join that does not have a 'where' clause gives the Cartesian product. Cartesian product result-set contains the number of rows in the first table, multiplied by the number of rows in second table. (Resulting in a higher dimension in the resulting set).

Answer 2

CROSS JOIN

This join is a Cartesian join that does not necessitate any condition to join. The resultset contains records that are multiplication of record number from both the tables.

/* CROSS JOIN */
SELECT t1.*,t2.*
FROM Table1 t1
CROSS JOIN Table2 t2

Sorce:
APRIL 13, 2009 BY PINAL DAVE SQL SERVER – Introduction to JOINs – Basic of JOINs

Answer 3

When you do Cross join you will get cartesian product. Each row in the first table is matched with every row in the second table