Evaluates a table-valued expression for every row on its left, inside FROM. Think of OUTER APPLY as a left outer join and CROSS APPLY as an inner join.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains APPLY in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Outer join
Unlike an inner join, it also returns unmatched rows:
LEFT OUTERandRIGHT OUTERkeep those from one table,FULL OUTERfrom both, and columns with no counterpart come back asNULL. - JOIN
Combines rows from two or more tables in one SELECT, most often by pairing a primary key with the foreign key that refers to it.
Related terms
- AI observability
A page in Data Security Posture Management listing the AI agents and apps used in the past 30 days. For each it shows whether it is high risk, any interactions involving sensitive data, and which policies apply to it.
- API Management
Azure's API gateway, where policies like rate limits, quotas, ip-filter and validate-jwt are defined once and apply to every API. Production VNet injection is offered in the Premium tier.
- Architecture Capability
An enterprise's capacity to build, apply and maintain its architecture, and to steer change through it. Established during the Preliminary Phase, it is a management idea rather than an organisational unit.
- Authentication context
A Conditional Access tag placed on just one sensitive area or action within an app (a particular SharePoint site, say, or activating a PIM role), so tougher sign-in conditions apply there without covering everything else in the app.
- Automation rule
Microsoft Sentinel rule triggered when an incident or alert from any source is created or updated, used to centrally set status, assign owners, apply tags and launch playbooks.
- Azure Files OAuth over REST
Capability allowing Microsoft Entra users, groups and managed identities to use OAuth tokens against the FileREST data API. The roles that grant it carry
readFileBackupSemanticsorwriteFileBackupSemantics; the SMB share roles don't apply. - Azure Front Door
Layer-7 global front end that fails over between origins using anycast, terminates TLS, routes requests by URL path and can apply a rate-limiting WAF.
- Bi-directional relationship
Here filters travel from either table to the other. That helps with many-to-many bridges, but because it can hurt performance and produce ambiguous paths, Microsoft Learn suggests turning it on only when needed or using CROSSFILTER in a measure. Row-level security still filters one way unless the setting to apply security filters both ways is chosen.