Outer Joins with multiple conditions - alternatives to UNION?

Question

It is my understanding that Oracle 8i does not directly support mutiple conditions for outer joins. For instance, I'm looking for PEOPLE who may, or may not, be on MEDICATIONS.
All MEDICATIONS are listed with DRUGNAME and DRUGID. There thousand of different drugs. I'm only looking for PEOPLE on either one or two of them (to make it simple) or no drug at all (ignoring all other DRUGS they're on..) IF they are on the DRUG, it's gerts printed.
I'd ideally do a LEFT OUTER JOIN to do this with multiple conditions:
SELECT DISTINCT
PERSON.NAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGNAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGID
FROM
PERSON,
MEDICATION
WHERE
PERSON.ID = MEDICATION.ID (+) AND
(MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 632 OR
MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 956)
This, of course, is not valid, at least in 8i...
So I've taken the UNION approach:
SELECT DISTINCT
PERSON.NAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGNAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGID
FROM
PERSON,
MEDICATION
WHERE
PERSON.ID = MEDICATION.ID (+) AND
MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 632
UNION
SELECT DISTINCT
PERSON.NAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGNAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGID
FROM
PERSON,
MEDICATION
WHERE
PERSON.ID = MEDICATION.ID (+) AND
MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 956
This of course, does work, but as I've added more drugs this becomes quite unwieldly and not really sure what this does to performance. (There are also several more joins to other tables, not relevent here.)
In addition, if I import this into Crystal Reports 8.5 (as opposed to the Crystal Query Designer), it refuses to recognize the UNION.
-- Any suggestions for alternative syntax ???
-- Has this been addressed in 9i ???
Thanks,
Will

Answer 1

You could try
select Distinct Person.Name, Med.DrugName, Med.DrugId
from Person,
(select ID, DrugName, DrugId from Medication
where DrugId in (632, 956) ) Med
where Person.ID = Med.ID(+)
SELECT DISTINCT
PERSON.NAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGNAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGID
FROM
PERSON,
MEDICATION
WHERE
PERSON.ID = MEDICATION.ID (+) AND
(MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 632 OR
MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 956)
This, of course, is not valid, at least in 8i...
So I've taken the UNION approach:
SELECT DISTINCT
PERSON.NAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGNAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGID
FROM
PERSON,
MEDICATION
WHERE
PERSON.ID = MEDICATION.ID (+) AND
MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 632
UNION
SELECT DISTINCT
PERSON.NAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGNAME,
MEDICATION.DRUGID
FROM
PERSON,
MEDICATION
WHERE
PERSON.ID = MEDICATION.ID (+) AND
MEDICATION.DRUGID (+) = 956
This of course, does work, but as I've added more drugs this becomes quite unwieldly and not really sure what this does to performance. (There are also several more joins to other tables, not relevent here.)
In addition, if I import this into Crystal Reports 8.5 (as opposed to the Crystal Query Designer), it refuses to recognize the UNION.
-- Any suggestions for alternative syntax ???
-- Has this been addressed in 9i ???
Thanks,
Will