Chapter 3. Joins

The FROM clause of a query is the first clause to be logically processed, and within the FROM clause table operators operate on input tables. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 supports four table operators—JOIN, APPLY, PIVOT, and UNPIVOT. The JOIN table operator is standard, while APPLY, PIVOT, and UNPIVOT are T-SQL extensions to the standard. These last three were introduced in SQL Server 2005. Each table operator acts on tables provided to it as input, applies a set of logical query processing phases, and returns a table result. This chapter focuses on the JOIN table operator. The APPLY operator will be covered ...

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