Oracle OUTER JOIN on more than one table

Question

Hi!
Friends, please help with this urgent problem: How can an outer join be written on more than one table?
An SQL Server query:
SELECT * from a INNER JOIN b on a.id = b.id LEFT OUTER JOIN c ON c.id = a.id AND c.id = b.id
works fine with SQL SERVER
But Oracle query:
SELECT * from a,b,c WHERE a.id = b.id AND a.id = c.id (+) AND b.id = c.id (+)
gives an error: OUTER JOIN cannot be used on more than one table? Why?
I use OracleDriver from classes12.zip to connect to Oracle8i database.
Please, help!

Answer 1

The Oracle 8i and later SQL reference reads that the following "join_types" are supported and under this syntax it does not limit the LEFT OUTER JOIN (syntax the same as SQLServer example in original note) to two tables as implied in these notes:
The join_type indicates the kind of join being performed:
Specify INNER to indicate explicitly that an inner join is being performed. This is the default.
Specify RIGHT to indicate a right outer join.
Specify LEFT to indicate a left outer join.
Specify FULL to indicate a full or two-sided outer join. In addition to the inner join, rows from both tables that have not been returned in the result of the inner join will be preserved and extended with nulls.
You can specify the optional OUTER keyword following RIGHT, LEFT, or FULL to explicitly clarify that an outer join is being performed.