Kenneth Fisher takes us through CROSS versus OUTER APPLY:
I love CROSS APPLY. I also love OUTER APPLY. What’s the difference though? The same difference as with an INNER vs OUTER JOINs. The CROSS APPLY only includes rows where there is a match, while OUTER APPLY includes all rows even if there isn’t a match. I’ve found over time that I have a lot easier time using an example for this rather than trying to explain in any detail. I’m going to use STRING_SPLIT for my example because it’s easy.
Click through for the example.