At 7:25 PM -0400 9/10/05, D. Richard Hipp wrote:
The rational behind using the CROSS keyword to disable an optimization is that the CROSS keyword is perfectly valid SQL syntax but nobody ever uses it so I figured we can put it to use to help control the optimizer without creating any incompatibilities.
Well, that's fine as long as CROSS still continues to mean and do what it has always meant, which is that you explicitly want the result set of "SELECT * FROM foo CROSS JOIN bar" to be every foo row crossed with every bar row. This actually is used in real situations, even though it is less common than an INNER or OUTER join. See SQL:2003, 7.7 "<joined table>". -- Darren Duncan
