I am trying to find the fastest way to find all of the records in a parent table that do not have certain records in a child table. For example, I want the query to return all of the family records where there are no male children or no children at all. 

Example 1

This is painfully slow:

SELECT * FROM Families
WHERE Families.FamilyID NOT IN(SELECT FamilyID FROM Children WHERE Children.Gender="m")

Example 2

This is faster:

SELECT * FROM Families
WHERE NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM Children WHERE Children.Gender="m" AND Children.FamilyID = Families.FamilyID)

Example 3

This is the fastest, but I'm worried about investing in it because I can't find any documentation on it. I don't even know what it's called. For want of a better term, we have been calling it an "anonymous query". 

SELECT * FROM Families
LEFT JOIN
[SELECT * FROM Children WHERE Gender="m"]. AS AliasChildren
ON Families.FamilyID=AliasChildren.FamilyID
WHERE AliasChildren.FamilyID IS NULL

So my question is this:


What is this thing called in example 3?
Is it a "mainstream" feature of Access that
will be supported in the future?
Where can I find documentation on
it (this might be easier once I know what it's called)?


Thanks!


Question: Poached eggs dissolve while cooking?
Answer: The likely contributing factors are (and probably more than one, and perhaps all apply):


Older, weaker red wine vinegar, which didn't sufficiently acidulate the water to denature the egg white proteins quickly, thus removing their ability to dissolve
Older eggs, with weaker, looser whites that spread more easily in the poaching liquid, and thus dissolve more easily due to greater surface area
Lower heat of the poaching liquid which would also slow the cooking of the white, allowing it more time to potentially dissolve before the proteins are denatured from heat, and thus can no longer do so