Question

Possible Duplicate:
WHERE clause better execute before IN and JOIN or after

Hello,

someone told me there is a performance difference for SQL Server queries when you use implicit vs. explict join notation.

What I mean is: does

SELECT *
  FROM employee 
INNER JOIN department
    ON employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID;

give better performance than

SELECT * 
FROM   employee, department 
WHERE  employee.DepartmentID = department.DepartmentID

?

Answer 1

If you wish to satisfy yourself at the expense / execution time taken per approach then simply run the query in the Sql Server Management Studio and select the “include actual execution plan” to review the execution per query.