Question

I have been getting requests that require me to query up to 1,000 account numbers against a several different tables.

I am looking for an easy way to determine which account numbers are not found in the tables I am querying.

For Example:

    select
        a.account#
        a.date
        a.amount
    from
        transactiontable as A
    where
        a.account# in ('1','2','3','4')

If account# 3 is not in this table, the account is not shown at all and my result will look like:

     Account# | Date | Amount
    --------------------------
         1    | 8/31 | $2.50
         2    | 8/31 | $7.25
         4    | 8/31 | $0.63

With only 4 account numbers, its easy to determine what one is missing. With 1,000+ account numbers is can be very difficult if not impossible to find out which are missing. I can’t use a “NOT IN” clause as that will return tens of thousands of records I am not looking for.

I’ve experimented doing a variety of joins with a master table that has all account numbers, but have had no success.

Is there a quick way in sql studio to determine what account numbers are missing? Or is there a way to code the query to get a result that looks more like this?

     Account# | Date | Amount
    --------------------------
         1    | 8/31 | $2.50
         2    | 8/31 | $7.25
         3    | NULL |  NULL
         4    | 8/31 | $0.63

Answer 1

Or is there a way to code the query to get a result that looks more like this?

OUTER JOIN your transaction table with your Accounts table. SELECT your Account# from the Accounts table, and your remaining fields from your transactions table. This will produce records for every Account, but null data for those accounts with no corresponding transactions.