Transact-SQL shorthand join syntax?

Question

I have noticed a few times when working on legacy code, that you can do left and right outer joins in sql by using the

=*

as kind of short

Answer 1

If you are using SQL Server, do not under any circumstances ever use that syntax. There are times when incorrect results are returned as sometimes SQL server interprets that correctly as an outer join and sometimes it interprets that syntax as a cross join. Since the result sets of the two are drastically different, you cannot ever rely onthe results from using this syntax. Further, SQL Server 2008 is the last version of SQl Server that will even allow the sysntax.