The difference is subtle, but it is a big difference. The ON condition stipulates which rows will be returned in the join, while the WHERE condition acts as a filter on the rows that actually were returned.Simple example: Consider a student table, consisting of one row per student, with student id and student name. In a second table, a list of grades that students have received, with student_id, subject, and grade. Give me a list of all students, and show their grade in Math. This requires a LEFT OUTER JOIN, because you want all students, and you know that some of them didn't take Math. Here a...