SQL 99 - CASE

SQL 99 supports
CASE statement within SELECT

like

SELECT col_a, col_b
CASE col_c
WHEN col_c = 1 THEN 'ONE'
WHEN col_c = 2 THEN 'TWO'
ELSE 'OTHER'
END
FROM tbl;

Probably this does an outer join and a Union, not sure, but this is handy and much easier to use than JOINs.

If any of u know the internals of this , u'r welcome to describe it here.

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Ani