Find records from one table which don't exist in another
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 '*
')
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 its magic.
Also, avoid "SELECT *" because it can break your code if someone alters the underlying tables or views (and it's inefficient).
The code below would be a bit more efficient than the answers presented above when dealing with larger datasets.
SELECT * FROM Call WHERE
NOT EXISTS (SELECT 'x' FROM Phone_book where
Phone_book.phone_number = Call.phone_number)