In an SQL statement, a join is part of the from clause. A join is needed to combines rows/records from multiple tables.
The join condition specifies how records from one table are related to the records of the other table.
Joins are typically used to query master-detail table relationships.
An essential task of the optimizer is to find an execution plan that executes the joins in an order and with join-methods to reduce the database resources and time needed to execute the statement.