A real hyperlink:

http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/715944/query-designer-wrongly-converts-the-non-ansi-joins

A similar experience is described here:

opc.three (3/15/2012)

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That makes perfect sense, and was a weakness of WHERE-clause JOINS due to the ambiguity of such things.

This is an example to run in your 80 compat mode DB...

opc.three (3/15/2012)

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Here's a little cheat for you using the Query Designer in SSMS 2008R2.

1. Restore a copy of your database into a DEV environment.

2. Change the database to 80 compatibility...