Tom,
Well, I sit corrected. Obviously I misread that.
> It's not so much that they are necessarily inefficient as that they
> constrain the planner's freedom of action. You need to think a lot more
> carefully about the order of joining than when you use inner joins.
I've also found that OUTER JOINS constrain the types of joins that can/will be
used as well as the order. Maybe you didn't intend it that way, but (for
example) OUTER JOINs seem much more likely to use expensive merge joins.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco