Final answer:
The outer join condition (+) in SQL is an Oracle-specific syntax used to perform an outer join, where it creates virtual null records for rows without a match in the other table. This allows for the inclusion of all records from one table, even if there is no corresponding match, by returning null values for the missing fields.
Step-by-step explanation:
The outer join condition (+) in SQL is a part of Oracle's proprietary join syntax. Its purpose is to facilitate an outer join, where the result includes not just the rows that match the join condition between two tables but also those rows from one side of the relationship that do not have a corresponding match on the other side. Option 1 describes the functionality accurately: it creates a virtual null record for rows from one table that do not have matching rows in the other table. This allows queries to return all records from one table and if there's no corresponding record in the joined table, the query populates the missing fields with null values.
When this condition is used, typically denoted as 'table1.column1 = table2.column2(+)', it indicates that if table2 does not have a matching column2 for every column1 in table1, the database should still return the row from table1 and show NULLs for columns from table2.
This is quite different from an inner join, which would only return rows where there's a match in both tables. The (+) operator used in Oracle's SQL syntax effectively turns an inner join into a left or right outer join, depending on which side of the join condition the operator is used.