01edab90   
   From: hugo@perFact.REMOVETHIS.info.INVALID   
      
   Hi Fred,   
      
   >My question is whether or not there can be a strong   
   >reason to prefer one over the other, such as impact   
   >on the order of evaluation.   
      
   No. Order of evaluation can and will be shuffled by the optimizer if   
   that can improve performance.   
      
   The only reason for using one and not the other is readability of the   
   query.   
      
   Note, though, that for OUTER JOINs, the two queries are NOT   
   equivalent!   
   --   
   Hugo Kornelis, SQL Server MVP   
   My SQL Server blog: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/hugo_kornelis   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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