Join (SQL) - Implementation

Implementation

Much work in database-systems has aimed at efficient implementation of joins, because relational systems commonly call for joins, yet face difficulties in optimising their efficient execution. The problem arises because inner joins operate both commutatively and associatively. In practice, this means that the user merely supplies the list of tables for joining and the join conditions to use, and the database system has the task of determining the most efficient way to perform the operation. A query optimizer determines how to execute a query containing joins. A query optimizer has two basic freedoms:

1. Join order: Because it joins functions commutatively and associatively, the order in which the system joins tables does not change the final result set of the query. However, join-order could have an enormous impact on the cost of the join operation, so choosing the best join order becomes very important.
2. Join method: Given two tables and a join condition, multiple algorithms can produce the result set of the join. Which algorithm runs most efficiently depends on the sizes of the input tables, the number of rows from each table that match the join condition, and the operations required by the rest of the query.

Many join-algorithms treat their inputs differently. One can refer to the inputs to a join as the "outer" and "inner" join operands, or "left" and "right", respectively. In the case of nested loops, for example, the database system will scan the entire inner relation for each row of the outer relation.

One can classify query-plans involving joins as follows:

left-deep

using a base table (rather than another join) as the inner operand of each join in the plan

right-deep

using a base table as the outer operand of each join in the plan

bushy

neither left-deep nor right-deep; both inputs to a join may themselves result from joins

These names derive from the appearance of the query plan if drawn as a tree, with the outer join relation on the left and the inner relation on the right (as convention dictates).