what is the advantage of CROSS JOIN over the normail cartesian product.

below is the plan of two statements ( from Tims's site ) . both shows the same plan.


12:09:37 SQL> SELECT first_name,last_name, department_name FROM employees CROSS JOIN departments;
Elapsed: 00:00:00.00

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
0 SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=CHOOSE (Cost=28 Card=2889 Bytes=7
8003)

1 0 MERGE JOIN (CARTESIAN) (Cost=28 Card=2889 Bytes=78003)
2 1 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'DEPARTMENTS' (Cost=1 Card=27 Byt
es=324)

3 1 BUFFER (SORT) (Cost=27 Card=107 Bytes=1605)
4 3 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'EMPLOYEES' (Cost=1 Card=107 By
tes=1605)




12:09:43 SQL> SELECT first_name,last_name, department_name FROM employees, departments;
Elapsed: 00:00:00.00

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
0 SELECT STATEMENT Optimizer=CHOOSE (Cost=28 Card=2889 Bytes=7
8003)

1 0 MERGE JOIN (CARTESIAN) (Cost=28 Card=2889 Bytes=78003)
2 1 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'DEPARTMENTS' (Cost=1 Card=27 Byt
es=324)

3 1 BUFFER (SORT) (Cost=27 Card=107 Bytes=1605)
4 3 TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'EMPLOYEES' (Cost=1 Card=107 By
tes=1605)