>>>>>Hi Naomi,
>>>>>>There should not be difference in performance, IMHO, but I would always prefer JOIN syntax over WHERE syntax for better readability.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Also JOIN and WHERE behave differently, JOIN happens first, then WHERE.
>>>>>
>>>>>Nope. Filtering normally comes first to speed up by reducing set size (usually the where clause) and then the join-operation.
>>>>>If there is a filter in the join condition SOMETIMES this is also executed during the first step (depends on the smarts of the engine).
>>>>>
>>>>>regards
>>>>>thomas
>>>>
>>>>I'm not sure this is correct (I believe it's incorrect). See message #1401825
>>>>
>>>>There needs to be done a bit of research on the topic to confirm/deny your statement, but I'm busy at the moment - will do the actual research later.
>>>
>>>No Join Clause mentioned in there... ;-)
>>>From needs to be checked first to establish the relevant tables.
>>>Unless you are talkink about special cases where the join involvels a tables with only a dozen records...
>>>
>>>regards
>>>
>>>thomas
>>
>>I remembered this message #1042994 thus I thought since then that JOIN happens first.
>
>It might in Joins involving only a handful of records, which is an eficient filter in itself, but the (for my queries at least) standard way of optimizing is reducing set size via index.

I believe this is correct:

http://www.sql.co.il/books/insidetsql2008/Logical%20Query%20Processing%20Poster.pdf