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Careful using that terminology. You'll get false negatives on people who still think in terms of *= syntax, and will tell you that the words "left", "outer", a

Careful using that terminology. You'll get false negatives on people who still think in terms of *= syntax, and will tell you that the words "left", "outer", and "join" are all redundant and probably don't belong in SQL in the first place. I used to be one of those guys, but I'm much less grumpy about it these days so I'd still pass your test. I have a sad suspicion that I'm on the progressive end of the spectrum when it comes to guys who deeply understand SQL.

ajuc 13y ago
Yep, I've done a lot of PL/SQL programming, and we've always used (+)= syntax and joins with all the tables after commas and all the joining conditions after WHERE. Now I work on different project and we use join syntax, but I could easily imagine people that do joins all day, and not know JOIN .. ON .. syntax.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  I came to Oracle after it adopted the ANSI syntax, so that's what I use. So my experience is the opposite of yours -- when I see the (+) I need to look up the syntax to remember if it's left or right outer.
  - jfb 13y ago
    And then I ask, hey, where's my BOOLEAN? And then I drink.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Oh god. And the lack of a serial/autoincrement/identity type. So. Many. Effing. Triggers. And 32-character identifiers. sigh
      - tmzt 13y ago
        It's so much better to use a database that only allows one autoincrementing value per record, or one TIMESTAMP and then only allows you to have either a create timestamp or an update timestamp without writing a trigger. I prefer the way Oracle does it, you may have to do more work but it's more explicit and flexible that way.
        jacques_chester 13y ago
        I don't. I prefer for the common case to be correctly and automatically handled for me.
brixon 13y ago
True, I use it for a conversation starter. You can tell the split second after you ask the question if you will get any kind of reasonable answer. I personally have used the *= syntax more than the LEFT syntax, but that concept has helped filter people since I am not allowed to "test" people.

ajuc 13y ago

Yep, I've done a lot of PL/SQL programming, and we've always used (+)= syntax and joins with all the tables after commas and all the joining conditions after WHERE. Now I work on different project and we use join syntax, but I could easily imagine people that do joins all day, and not know JOIN .. ON .. syntax.

jacques_chester 13y ago
I came to Oracle after it adopted the ANSI syntax, so that's what I use. So my experience is the opposite of yours -- when I see the (+) I need to look up the syntax to remember if it's left or right outer.
- jfb 13y ago
  And then I ask, hey, where's my BOOLEAN? And then I drink.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Oh god. And the lack of a serial/autoincrement/identity type. So. Many. Effing. Triggers. And 32-character identifiers. sigh
    - tmzt 13y ago
      It's so much better to use a database that only allows one autoincrementing value per record, or one TIMESTAMP and then only allows you to have either a create timestamp or an update timestamp without writing a trigger. I prefer the way Oracle does it, you may have to do more work but it's more explicit and flexible that way.
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        I don't. I prefer for the common case to be correctly and automatically handled for me.

brixon 13y ago

True, I use it for a conversation starter. You can tell the split second after you ask the question if you will get any kind of reasonable answer. I personally have used the *= syntax more than the LEFT syntax, but that concept has helped filter people since I am not allowed to "test" people.