title: Oracle USING clause best practice
body: <p>Disclaimer: I'm a developer and not a DBA.</p>
  
  <p>I've been a huge fan of the USING clause in Oracle since I accidentally stumbled upon it and have used it in place of the old-fashioned ON clause to join fact tables with dimension tables ever since. To me, it creates a much more succinct SQL and produces a more concise result set with no unnecessary duplicated columns.</p>
  
  <p>However, I was asked yesterday by a colleague to convert all my USING clauses into ONs. I will check with him and ask him what his reasons are. He works much more closely with the database than I do, so I assume he has some good reasons. </p>
  
  <p>I have not heard back from him (we work in different timezones), but I wonder if there are any guidelines or best practices regarding the use of the "using" clause? I've googled around quite a bit, but have not come across anything definitive. In fact, I've not even even a good debate anywhere.</p>
  
  <p>Can someone shed some light on this? Or provide a link to a good discussion on the topic?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you!</p>