Hive QL Except clause

I don't think there's any built-in way to do this but a LEFT OUTER JOIN should do the trick.

This selects all Ids from table1 that do not exist in table2:

SELECT t1.id FROM table1 t1 LEFT OUTER JOIN table2 t2 ON (t1.id=t2.id) WHERE t2.id IS NULL;

We can use NOT EXISTS clause in Hive as MINUS equivalent.

SELECT t1.id FROM t1 WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 from t2 WHERE t2.id = t1.id);