Hi All,

I'm from the oracle land and am having a problem in writing a simple outer
join query in SQL Server.

I'm simplifying the problem with the help of these test tables.

CREATE TABLE t1(A VARCHAR(10), A1 VARCHAR(10), A2 VARCHAR(10));
CREATE TABLE t2(B VARCHAR(10), B1 VARCHAR(10));
CREATE TABLE t3(C VARCHAR(10), C1 VARCHAR(10));
CREATE TABLE t4(D VARCHAR(10), D1 VARCHAR(10));

INSERT INTO t1 VALUES ('A', 'AA', 'AAAA');
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (null, 'AAAA', 'AAAA');

INSERT INTO t2 VALUES ('A', 'BB');

INSERT INTO t3 VALUES ('A', 'CC');

INSERT INTO t4 VALUES ('AAAA', 'DD');

Table t1 refers to t2(through a) and t4(through a2) directly and t2 refers to
t3(through b).

I want to join t1 to t2, t3, t4 and retrieve all the rows inside t1
irrespective of whether the value is there in the other tables or
not(outer-join of course)

I wrote this query in Oracle and it works

SQL> SELECT a1, b1, c1, d1
2 FROM t1, t2, t3, t4
3 WHERE t1.a = t2.b(+)
4 AND t2.b = t3.c(+)
5 AND t1.a2 = t4.d
6 /

A1 B1 C1 D1
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
AA BB CC DD
AAAA DD

I substituted the "+" with the "*" to use it in SQL Server which made my
query look like this:

SELECT a1, b1, c1, d1
FROM t1, t2, t3, t4
WHERE t1.a =* t2.b
AND t2.b =* t3.c
AND t1.a2 = t4.d

But it fails with the error:

"The table 't1' is an inner member of an outer-join clause. This is not
allowed if the table also participates in a regular join clause."

How to overcome this? Or is the query wrong?

Regards
Naveen



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