Cartesian join

A Cartesian join or Cartesian product is a join of every row of one table to every row of another table. This normally happens when no matching join columns are specified. For example, if table A with 100 rows is joined with table B with 1000 rows, a Cartesian join will return 100,000 rows.

Note: A Cartesian product may indicate a missing join condition. A query must have at least (N-1) join conditions to prevent a Cartesian product, where N is the number of tables in the query. However a Cartesian product may be something valid; for instance, in a star schema, a Cartesian join between dimension tables is not unusual.

Syntax examples

Using Oracle join syntax:

SELECT * FROM emp, dept;

SELECT * 
  FROM emp, dept
 WHERE dept.deptno = 10
   AND emp.sal > 10000;

Using ANSI join syntax:

SELECT * FROM emp CROSS JOIN dept;

Also see

• Equi join
• Inner join
• Natural join
• Nonequi join
• Outer join
• Self join

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