For years I’ve looked at various queries online in sample code, diagnostic queries using DMVs, and the like and seen CROSS APPLY in the FROM clauses. But I’ve never really managed to comprehend what it was for or how it worked because I never saw a case where it was directly applied to something I was doing.
Finally, this week I had a breakthrough. I was working on updating a bunch of data but it was breaking on a small subset of that data.