Is too many Left Joins a code smell?

Question

If you have for example > 5 left joins in a query is that a code smell that there is ...

• something wrong with your design?
• you\'re doing too much in o

Answer 1

It is pretty much impossible for someone to answer a question as general as this and to attempt to create such an arbitrary rule would pointless.

Left joins are a perfectly acceptable type of join which map onto a very common need: get me all x's, if they have associated y's then get those too.