Created by Unknown User (mro), last modified by James Hurrell on Feb 18, 2020
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Summary: This page provides an explanation of the Quality Rule 1101000 "Never use SQL queries with a cartesian product" that is triggered by the SQL Analyzer during an analysis.

What is searched by this rule ?

The algorithm is the following for each SELECT:

  • all table references of FROM clauses are considered
  • if there is a 'joining' between two table references then they are considered as 'connected'
  • if all table references are 'connected' then there is no violation

You can view this Quality Rule as a detector of 'Nested Loops' in query plan. Explicit CROSS JOINS are not excluded from violations.

Example of violations

Trivial

SELECT * FROM A, B;

Less trivial

This is less trivial, and may appear as an incorrect violation at first sight:

Select *
From TBL1 a, TBL2 b
Where a.COL3 = 12.5 
  AND b.COL5 = '10102';

Here each table is filtered but independently. So the query can be rewritten as follows:

Select *
From (select * TBL1 Where COL3 = 12.5) a, (select * FROM TBL2 b Where b.COL5 = '10102') b;

This can be easily proven by using query plan display. Here are some examples conducted with postgresql:

create table t1 (col1 integer);
create table t2 (col1 integer);

SELECT * FROM t1, t2;
/*
==> classical cartesian product
"Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..72074.00 rows=5760000 width=8)"
"  ->  Seq Scan on t1  (cost=0.00..34.00 rows=2400 width=4)"
"  ->  Materialize  (cost=0.00..46.00 rows=2400 width=4)"
"        ->  Seq Scan on t2  (cost=0.00..34.00 rows=2400 width=4)"
*/

SELECT * FROM t1, t2 WHERE t1.col1 = 1 and t2.col1 =1;
/*
==> almost same query plan as classical cartesian product : Nested Loop
"Nested Loop  (cost=0.00..81.83 rows=144 width=8)"
"  ->  Seq Scan on t1  (cost=0.00..40.00 rows=12 width=4)"
"        Filter: (col1 = 1)"
"  ->  Materialize  (cost=0.00..40.06 rows=12 width=4)"
"        ->  Seq Scan on t2  (cost=0.00..40.00 rows=12 width=4)"
"              Filter: (col1 = 1)"
*/

SELECT * FROM t1, t2 WHERE t1.col1 = t2.col1;
/*
==> no cartesian product
"Merge Join  (cost=337.49..781.49 rows=28800 width=8)"
"  Merge Cond: (t1.col1 = t2.col1)"
"  ->  Sort  (cost=168.75..174.75 rows=2400 width=4)"
"        Sort Key: t1.col1"
"        ->  Seq Scan on t1  (cost=0.00..34.00 rows=2400 width=4)"
"  ->  Sort  (cost=168.75..174.75 rows=2400 width=4)"
"        Sort Key: t2.col1"
"        ->  Seq Scan on t2  (cost=0.00..34.00 rows=2400 width=4)"
*/