IN vs. JOIN with large rowsets

Question

I\'m wanting to select rows in a table where the primary key is in another table. I\'m not sure if I should use a JOIN or the IN operator in SQL Server 2005. Is there any si

Answer 1

Speaking from experience on a Table with 49,000,000 rows I would recommend LEFT OUTER JOIN. Using IN, or EXISTS Took 5 minutes to complete where the LEFT OUTER JOIN finishes in 1 second.

SELECT a.*
FROM a LEFT OUTER JOIN b ON a.c = b.d
WHERE b.d is not null -- Given b.d is a primary Key with index

Actually in my query I do this across 9 tables.