Which is faster - Outer join or Subquery

[Deepa More]

I have to show report whose data is based on many tables.
I am able to display records using 2 ways, one is outer joins on 2 tables with 1 subquery and
other is outer joins on 1 tables with 2 subqueries.
Both gives data(around 13000) in around 5 seconds.
Which one will be faster?

Does nvl or nvl2 slow down query, is there any other option?

Thanks,
Deepa

[Mark Spritzler]

Well, you can't completely judge which will be faster, but you can get explain plans and see the scores of those, and I would suggest that the one with the lower score would be the fastest, but there are no guarantees.

Testing is the best way to see.

Mark