07-27-2023, 12:26 PM
I am not a relational database expert, so take this with a grain of salt.
The general idea about sub queries vs joins is the path the evaluation of the larger query takes.
In order to perform the larger query, every individual subquery has to be executed first, and then the resultset is stored as a temporary table that the larger query interacts with.
This temporary table is unindexed, so, any comparison requires scanning the whole resultset.
In contrast, when you use a join, all indexes are in use and so, comparison require traversing index trees (or hash tables), which is way less expensive in terms of speed.
Now, what I don't know if newer versions of the most popular relational engines execute the evaluation on reverse, and just load the necessary elements in the temporary table, as an optimization method.
The general idea about sub queries vs joins is the path the evaluation of the larger query takes.
In order to perform the larger query, every individual subquery has to be executed first, and then the resultset is stored as a temporary table that the larger query interacts with.
This temporary table is unindexed, so, any comparison requires scanning the whole resultset.
In contrast, when you use a join, all indexes are in use and so, comparison require traversing index trees (or hash tables), which is way less expensive in terms of speed.
Now, what I don't know if newer versions of the most popular relational engines execute the evaluation on reverse, and just load the necessary elements in the temporary table, as an optimization method.