quote:
According to the ANSI rules (as I understand them) a WHERE clause will be applied after the ON clauses have been processed.
Remember this is only the logical order (it makes a difference with outer joins), and not necessarily the physical one.
E.g. if a WHERE clause references one column in a covering index, SQL Server is likely to filter the records when accessing the table(index) data, rather than applying the filter oinly after processing the join.
Tim Wilkinson
"If it doesn't work in practice, you're using the wrong theory"
- Immanuel Kant