Old Style Oracle Outer Join Syntax - Why locate the (+) on the right side of the equals sign in a Left Outer join?

Question

I always tell new people that an easy way to remember the old-style, Oracle outer-join syntax is that

the (+) sign is on opposite side of where you t

Answer 1

The (+) identifies the table that is being outer joined to. The way I was taught, the (+) indicated the table that would have missing rows for which new NULL rows had to be added.

If you look at the alternate left outer join syntaxes that various databases supported before LEFT OUTER JOIN became part of the ANSI standard, the proprietary operator was generally applied to the table that was "missing" rows. DB2 also supports the (+) operator for outer joins in the same way that Oracle does.