That's a spot-on observation... and...

Does a inner join (for that matter any join) with a inequality condition in the where clause make a triangular join.

Yes, but in the presence of other criteria, it can...

Christian Buettner (12/7/2007)

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Hi Jeff, Chirag,

I am not sure if I misunderstood something, but the SQL Statement does NOT utilize a "triangular join":

Select orderid,orderdate,productid

from orders O INNER JOIN orderdetails OD

On O.orderid...

On the other hand, if your goal is for elegant well written code above all, especially in a more purely theoretical setting, then you can largely if not completely ignore...

Yes, but in the presence of other criteria, it can...

Heh... you're a sick man, Corey 🙂 ... I hate Oracle... 😉

Again, very well said... if the...

But by not considering the physical aspect, or how the logical applies to it, you will eventually build something that left to its own devices will do just that (saturate...

This was an awesome articles and it spawned a great discussion.

But the question of whether or not you can disregard the physical layer depends on your goal. In most cases...

I would disagree with your assertion that set based programming is code that touches rows once or very few times and that the query you specified is not set based....

TheSQLGuru (12/6/2007)

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I must say that I am very happy that people can do things like the triangular join - and sad that Jeff may make less people do it. ...

Thanks for the feedback, Matt... and thanks for the "missing link" info... I just fixed it.

Charles Kincaid (12/6/2007)

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The row number thing is interesting, butt ...

As a developer I'm not limited to doing EVEYTHING in SQL. For SQL2K I just count the rows coming into...

"Set-based" refers to a logical construct--the programming model. "RBAR" refers to a physical implementation of the solution (at least as you use it in the article). I assert that the...

Thank you for the both the feedback, and the encouragement!