Readability
The ANSI-89 Join syntax of joining tables in the WHERE clause is difficult to read and has been superseded in the ANSI-92 release of the standard by a more readable syntax. In particular, the (+) operator used in Oracle to define Outer Joins can be confusing because its use is not intuitive.
SELECT sc.customerid
,sc.customername
,sb.buyinggroupname
,sb.deliverymethodname
FROM sales_customers sc
,sales_buyinggroups sb
WHERE sc.buyinggroupid(+)=sb.buyinggroupid
Only use the ANSI-92 compliant join syntax.
SELECT sc.customerid
,sc.customername
,sb.buyinggroupname
,sb.deliverymethodname
FROM sales_customers sc
LEFT
JOIN sales_buyinggroups sb
ON sc.buyinggroupid=sb.buyinggroupid
None