Let me start off by saying this isn't a perl question as such but I hope you'll indulge me

Simple question: can all SQL JOIN statements be expressed either as JOINs or WHERE syntax? In other words, is the syntax "INNER JOIN ON foo = bar" unique, and can do things that can't be done any other way, or is it just a Tim-Toady kind of expression of the same thing?

This all started with my desire to make a database for a TV show here with proper normalisation of what's a kind of three-dimensional structure.

So now I have a table of people, a table of roles and a table of episodes, and a fourth table with three numeric columns, which contains the information that in episode n, person n plays role n.

So in order to find out who plays which role in episode one, I can (thanks to Jeffa) do this:

    SELECT people.firstname, people.lastname, role.name
    FROM roles
    INNER JOIN eps_people_roles
        ON 
        roles.id = eps_people_roles.role
            INNER JOIN people
                ON 
                eps_people_roles.person = people.id 
    WHERE 
        eps_people_roles.ep = 1
[download]

but unless I'm completely crazy, I can also do this:

    SELECT 
        people.firstname, people.lastname,  role.name
    FROM people, roles, eps_people_roles
    WHERE (
            roles.id = eps_people_roles.role
              AND
            eps_people_roles.person = people.id
          )
    AND eps_people_roles.ep = 1
[download]

which seems to give the same results. I'm asking, to be honest, because I just like that second kind of syntax better.

($_='kkvvttuubbooppuuiiffssqqffssmmiibbddllffss')
 =~y~b-v~a-z~s;                             print
[download]