Does the join order matter in SQL?

For INNER joins, no, the order doesn’t matter. The queries will return same results, as long as you change your selects from SELECT * to SELECT a.*, b.*, c.*.

For (LEFT, RIGHT or FULL) OUTER joins, yes, the order matters – and (updated) things are much more complicated.

First, outer joins are not commutative, so a LEFT JOIN b is not the same as b LEFT JOIN a

Outer joins are not associative either, so in your examples which involve both (commutativity and associativity) properties:

a LEFT JOIN b 
    ON b.ab_id = a.ab_id
  LEFT JOIN c
    ON c.ac_id = a.ac_id

is equivalent to:

a LEFT JOIN c 
    ON c.ac_id = a.ac_id
  LEFT JOIN b
    ON b.ab_id = a.ab_id

but:

a LEFT JOIN b 
    ON  b.ab_id = a.ab_id
  LEFT JOIN c
    ON  c.ac_id = a.ac_id
    AND c.bc_id = b.bc_id

is not equivalent to:

a LEFT JOIN c 
    ON  c.ac_id = a.ac_id
  LEFT JOIN b
    ON  b.ab_id = a.ab_id
    AND b.bc_id = c.bc_id

Another (hopefully simpler) associativity example. Think of this as (a LEFT JOIN b) LEFT JOIN c:

a LEFT JOIN b 
    ON b.ab_id = a.ab_id          -- AB condition
 LEFT JOIN c
    ON c.bc_id = b.bc_id          -- BC condition

This is equivalent to a LEFT JOIN (b LEFT JOIN c):

a LEFT JOIN  
    b LEFT JOIN c
        ON c.bc_id = b.bc_id          -- BC condition
    ON b.ab_id = a.ab_id          -- AB condition

only because we have “nice” ON conditions. Both ON b.ab_id = a.ab_id and c.bc_id = b.bc_id are equality checks and do not involve NULL comparisons.

You can even have conditions with other operators or more complex ones like: ON a.x <= b.x or ON a.x = 7 or ON a.x LIKE b.x or ON (a.x, a.y) = (b.x, b.y) and the two queries would still be equivalent.

If however, any of these involved IS NULL or a function that is related to nulls like COALESCE(), for example if the condition was b.ab_id IS NULL, then the two queries would not be equivalent.

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