SQL JOIN vs IN performance?

Generally speaking, IN and JOIN are different queries that can yield different results.

SELECT  a.*
FROM    a
JOIN    b
ON      a.col = b.col

is not the same as

SELECT  a.*
FROM    a
WHERE   col IN
        (
        SELECT  col
        FROM    b
        )

, unless b.col is unique.

However, this is the synonym for the first query:

SELECT  a.*
FROM    a
JOIN    (
        SELECT  DISTINCT col
        FROM    b
        )
ON      b.col = a.col

If the joining column is UNIQUE and marked as such, both these queries yield the same plan in SQL Server.

If it's not, then IN is faster than JOIN on DISTINCT.

See this article in my blog for performance details:

• IN vs. JOIN vs. EXISTS

That's rather hard to say - in order to really find out which one works better, you'd need to actually profile the execution times.

As a general rule of thumb, I think if you have indices on your foreign key columns, and if you're using only (or mostly) INNER JOIN conditions, then the JOIN will be slightly faster.

But as soon as you start using OUTER JOIN, or if you're lacking foreign key indexes, the IN might be quicker.

Marc