Inner join & outer join; is the order of tables in from important?

Question

Why is the order of tables important when combining an outer & an inner join ? the following fails with postgres:

SELECT grp.number AS number,     
              


        

Answer 1

I don't know what is causing that behavior, if it's a bug or by design, but it should work fine if you stick with one form of join or the other.

SELECT grp.number AS number,     
       tags.value AS tag   
FROM groups grp
JOIN insrel archiverel ON archiverel.dnumber = grp.number
LEFT OUTER JOIN ownrel ownrel ON grp.number = ownrel.dnumber   
LEFT OUTER JOIN tags tags ON tags.number = ownrel.snumber   
WHERE archiverel.snumber = 11128188

I would be interested to know more if the behavior is by design.