SQL - find records from one table which don't exist in another

Question

I\'ve got the following two SQL tables (in MySQL):

Phone_book
+----+------+--------------+
| id | name | phone_number |
+----+------+--------------+
| 1  | J         


        

Answer 1

There's several different ways of doing this, with varying efficiency, depending on how good your query optimiser is, and the relative size of your two tables:

This is the shortest statement, and may be quickest if your phone book is very short:

SELECT  *
FROM    Call
WHERE   phone_number NOT IN (SELECT phone_number FROM Phone_book)

alternatively (thanks to Alterlife)

SELECT *
FROM   Call
WHERE  NOT EXISTS
  (SELECT *
   FROM   Phone_book
   WHERE  Phone_book.phone_number = Call.phone_number)

or (thanks to WOPR)

SELECT * 
FROM   Call
LEFT OUTER JOIN Phone_Book
  ON (Call.phone_number = Phone_book.phone_number)
  WHERE Phone_book.phone_number IS NULL

(ignoring that, as others have said, it's normally best to select just the columns you want, not '*')