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

Question

Hi,

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

Phone_book
+----+------+--------------+
| id | name | phone_number |
+----+------+--------------+
| 1  | John | 111111111111 |
+----+------+--------------+
| 2  | Jane | 222222222222 |
+----+------+--------------+

Call
+----+------+--------------+
| id | date | phone_number |
+----+------+--------------+
| 1  | 0945 | 111111111111 |
+----+------+--------------+
| 2  | 0950 | 222222222222 |
+----+------+--------------+
| 3  | 1045 | 333333333333 |
+----+------+--------------+

How do I find out which calls were made by people whose phone_number is not in the Phone_book? The desired output would be:

Call
+----+------+--------------+
| id | date | phone_number |
+----+------+--------------+
| 3  | 1045 | 333333333333 |
+----+------+--------------+

Any help would be much appreciated.

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 Kieran)

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 '*')

Answer 2

The could below would be a bit more efficient than the answers presented when dealing with larger datasets:

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

Answer 3

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

Should remove the subquery, allowing the query optimiser to work it's magic.

Also, avoid "SELECT *" because it can break your code if someone alters the underlying tables or views (and it's inefficient).