What is the impact of performing a Cartesian join with the Append Fields tool?

Performing a Cartesian join with the Append Fields tool results in a significant increase in the number of records because it combines every record from one dataset with every record from another dataset. This means that if you have, for example, 100 records in the first dataset and 50 records in the second dataset, the result of the Cartesian join would be 5,000 records (100 multiplied by 50). This multiplication effect happens because the tool does not have any joining conditions that would limit the combinations. Therefore, the output records will equal the product of the number of records from both datasets, making it essential to consider this when designing workflows to avoid unintended data bloat.