CROSS Join In SQL

A cross join, cartesian join or product provides the foundation upon which all types of inner joins operate. A cross join returns the cartesian product of the sets of records from the two joined tables. Thus, it equates to an inner join where the join-condition always evaluates to True or join-condition is absent in statement.

If A and B are two sets, then the cross join is written as A × B.

The SQL code for a cross join lists the tables for joining (FROM), but does not include any filtering join-predicate.

Example of an explicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee CROSS JOIN department

Example of an implicit cross join:

SELECT *
FROM employee, department;