Alternative to NOT IN

Question

Alternative to NOT IN

jmccary

Mr or Mrs. 500

Points: 541
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December 8, 2003 at 5:24 am

#83584

I am trying to speed up a query. I am looking for an alternative to a 'NOT IN'. Example: I have a table with 2 columns-
IDFromTable1 IDFromTable2
1 100
1 102
1 104
2 110
2 102
2 100
3 104
3 100
3 134
Now, I can do something like:
Select IDFromTable1 from Table where IDFromTable2=100 and IDFromTable1 NOT IN (Select IDFromTable1 from Table where IDFromTable2=102)
The above query should return an IDFromTable1 of 3.
From what I've read, an alternative might be some type of self join. Any help/suggestions appreciated.
John

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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Jonathan SSC-Insane Points: 20427 More actions · Answer 1

A self-join won't really help because you'd still need to exclude the rows with any IDFromTable1 where IDFromTable2 is excluded. If you don't already have one, try putting an index on IDFromTable2. You culd also try using NOT EXISTS rather than NOT IN, e.g.:



SELECT IDFromTable1

FROM [Table] o

WHERE IDFromTable2 = 100

AND NOT EXISTS

(SELECT *

 FROM [Table] i

 WHERE i.IDFromTable1 = o.IDFromTable1

 AND i.IDFromTable2 = 102)

--Jonathan

jmccary Mr or Mrs. 500 Points: 541 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks so much Jonathan. The NOT EXISTS worked great... performance probably 10 times faster and now acceptable.

gljjr SSChampion Points: 10080 More actions · Answer 3

For a left join you could try something like the following...



SELECT T.IDFromTable1 , T.IDFromTable2 

FROM Table T

    LEFT JOIN Table T2 ON T.IDFromTable1 = T2.IDFromTable1 AND T2.IDFromTable2 = 102

WHERE T2.IDFromTable1 IS NULL

The outer join should be faster than the Not Exists and Not In when you have a large dataset.

Gary Johnson

Microsoft Natural Language Group

DBA, Sr. DB Engineer

Gary Johnson
Microsoft Natural Language Group
DBA, Sr. DB Engineer

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. The opinions expressed in this post are my own and may not reflect that of my employer.

David Burrows SSC Guru Points: 65142 More actions · Answer 4

quote:
The outer join should be faster than the Not Exists

Hmmm, interesting. I thought this and was going to post a join query. But before I did, I tried an example by matching one table with 69,281 rows against another with 321,980 rows, both with primary keys and looking for any row in the first not in the second (using primary key). When I looked at the execution plans I was surprised that they were virtually identical other then the NOT EXISTS does a 'Right Anti Semi Join'. The NOT EXISTS took 5 secs whereas the JOIN took 28 secs. Not the same as John's I know but it does no harm to experiment.

Far away is close at hand in the images of elsewhere.
Anon.

jmccary Mr or Mrs. 500 Points: 541 More actions · Answer 5

Thanks for all the posts and information. It's been very informative. After more experimenting, the NOT EXISTS runs about 8 times faster on average. Seems the larger the number of rows in the 'NOT' side has a much bigger impact on the 'NOT IN' than the 'NOT EXISTS'.

Now it's off to BOL, what the heck is a 'right anti semi join'...

John

dsteinschneider SSC Enthusiast Points: 170 More actions · Answer 6

I just installed the Google Searchbar and decided to try the feature where you right click on text on a browser page and choose google search. The top ranked result was from MSDN:

Right Anti Semi Join

The Right Anti Semi Join logical operator will output each row from the second (bottom) input when a matching row in the first (top) input does not exist. A matching row is defined as a row that satisfies the predicate in the Argument column (if no predicate exists, each row is a matching row).