Ace the Coding Interview: SQL — Cross Join

Let’s discover the power of cross join in SQL, a seamless way to merge tables based on matching column names. Learn its benefits and usage. Let’s get started now!

What is a Cross Join?

A cross join, also known as a Cartesian join, is a type of join operation in SQL where all possible combinations of rows from two or more tables are returned. It does not require a join condition based on matching columns like other types of joins. Instead, it generates the Cartesian product of the tables involved.

In a cross join, each row from the first table is combined with every row from the second table, resulting in a new table with the number of rows equal to the product of the row counts in the original tables. The resulting dataset will have all possible combinations of rows from the participating tables.

As per usual, we want to get straight to the point. So let’s start exploring the operation. But before doing just that, I want to give some insight. If you want to be a bit more productive and actually test these things , I will show you how. We can create these tables in real time. If you want to learn how to use and install the SQL Server Management Studio, please refer to this article here :