SQL Server: What is the difference between CROSS JOIN and FULL OUTER JOIN?

Question

What is the difference between CROSS JOIN and FULL OUTER JOIN in SQL Server?

Are they the same, or not? Please explain. When would one use either of these?

Answer 1

For SQL Server, CROSS JOIN and FULL OUTER JOIN are different. CROSS JOIN is simply Cartesian Product of two tables, irrespective of any filter criteria or any condition.

FULL OUTER JOIN gives unique result set of LEFT OUTER JOIN and RIGHT OUTER JOIN of two tables. It also needs ON clause to map two columns of tables.

Table 1 contains 10 rows and Table 2 contains 20 rows with 5 rows matching on specific columns.

Then CROSS JOIN will return 10*20=200 rows in result set.

FULL OUTER JOIN will return 25 rows in result set.

FULL OUTER JOIN (or any other JOIN) always returns result set with less than or equal to Cartesian Product number.

Number of rows returned by FULL OUTER JOIN equal to (No. of Rows by LEFT OUTER JOIN) + (No. of Rows by RIGHT OUTER JOIN) - (No. of Rows by INNER JOIN).