I have been porting oracle selects, and I have been running across a lot of queries like so:

SELECT e.last_name,
       d.department_name
  FROM employees e,
      departments d
WHERE e.department_id(+) = d.department_id;

...and:

SELECT last_name, 
       d.department_id
  FROM employees e, 
       departments d
 WHERE e.department_id = d.department_id(+);

Are there any guides/tutorials for converting all of the variants of the (+) syntax? What is that syntax even called (so I can scour google)?

Even better.. Is there a tool that will do this conversion for me?

When was this standard phased out? Any info is appreciated.