Answer
CROSS JOINs produce Cartesian products. They may:
- Explode row counts
- Consume massive CPU
- Stress memory
- Cause system freezes
They must be used intentionally and carefully.
Quick Answer
CROSS JOIN produces every combination of rows from two tables — N × M rows. A CROSS JOIN between two 10,000-row tables produces 100 million rows. Usually unintentional (a forgotten JOIN condition). In real systems, accidental CROSS JOINs can bring down a server by overwhelming memory, CPU, and TempDB simultaneously.
S
SugharaIQ Editorial Team
Verified Answer
This answer has been peer-reviewed by industry experts holding senior engineering roles to ensure technical accuracy and relevance for modern interview standards.
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Source: SugharaIQ