You may have to qualify column names in an outer reference. An outer reference is a reference within a subquery to a table specified in an outer query that contains the subquery. An outer reference is also called a correlated reference. For example, the previous example that retrieved the names of employees who worked in the marketing department can be reformulated to use an outer reference. SQL> SELECT FIRST_NAME, -- cont> LAST_NAME -- cont> FROM EMPLOYEES -- cont> WHERE 'MKTG' IN -- cont> (SELECT DEPARTMENT_CODE -- -- Outer cont> FROM JOB_HISTORY -- -- Query cont> WHERE JOB_END IS NULL -- Sub- -- cont> AND -- query -- cont> EMPLOYEE_ID = cont> EMPLOYEES.EMPLOYEE_ID) -- -- cont> -- --------------------- cont> -- outer reference cont> ; FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME Chris Danzig Lawrence Hall Paul Belliveau 3 rows selected If the outer reference to EMPLOYEE_ID in this example were not qualified by the table name EMPLOYEES, it would refer to the EMPLOYEE_ID column in the subquery, not the outer query. The predicate EMPLOYEE_ID = EMPLOYEE_ID is true for all values of EMPLOYEE_ID that are not null, so the statement would not generate an error, but would give unexpected results. Instead of the three marketing employees, it would select all rows of the EMPLOYEES table with values in the EMPLOYEE_ID column that were not null. Although the outer reference is contained within a subquery, it receives its value from an outer query. Because of this, the subquery must be evaluated once for each value that the outer reference receives from the outer query. It is this characteristic that defines an outer reference.