Partitioned outer join in Oracle 10 and over

This is really an amazing thing. you got to report on data which is not in the database! yes i mean it. one of my report query shows counts grouping by on member and month of the year. something like this,
ABC 01-2001 54
ABC 02-2001 45
ABC 04-2001 12
DEF 09-2001 76
DEF 10-2001 65
you can see that there is no data for ABC for the month of march. this is what the QC team here needs to catch. what i was asked to do is to display another row like ABC 03-2001 0.
well my current query is 40 lines with two subqueries outerjoined. its complicated and i have to make it over complicated now! i tried several nasty ways and was not even close to what was needed. then googled and found this article..

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/o14asktom-084433.html

this guy is doing exactly what i needed. but i could hardly grasp his explanation.
meanwhile i shared my issue with one of the DBA and she was also scratching her head for some time now. she suggested few techniques and after a while forwarded me this artcile, which i feel is worth sharing.

http://www.oracle-developer.net/display.php?id=312

this is what i need and its explained very clearly.

i am back to work trying to mess around with my query now!