Ernie Schlangen (8/24/2011)
I was able to look this up and find the right answer but I'd be lying if I said that I understood what is going on here. Is there an article that explains the join hints? If not, perhaps that's a good area for a future article. MSDN wasn't particularly helpful to me on this. I suspect that they expect me to have some base level of knowledge that I'm lacking. :crying:
Typically SQL server selects the best execution plan for a query and MS recommends that join hints be used as a last resort.
Check out the See Also links on the Join Hints BOL page