Question

I was wondering if anyone can help me write some code for the following logic.

We have a table

----------------
id, lang, letter
----------------
1    1      E
1    1      E
1    1      E
1    1      E
2    2      F 

Problem:

I need to select ALL the rows for which the following condition fails:

• id = lang (ie its either 1 or 2)
• lang = 1 when letter = ‘e’ OR lang=2 when letter=2

I know I can hard code it. Also i would like to do this in ONE query only.

Please help

Answer 1

I think this is what you want to exclude the records meeting that criteria:

create table #t
(
    id int,
    lang int,
    letter varchar(1)
)

insert into #t values (1, 1, 'E')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'E')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'E')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'E')
insert into #t values (2, 2, 'F')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'G')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'H')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'I')
insert into #t values (1, 1, 'J')
insert into #t values (2, 2, '2')


SELECT *
FROM #t
WHERE NOT
(
    id = lang
    AND
    (
        (
            lang = 1
            AND letter = 'E'
        )
        OR
        (
            lang = 2
            AND letter = '2'
        )
    )
)

drop table #t

to get the records with that, just remove the NOT it:

SELECT *
FROM #t
WHERE 
(
    id = lang
    AND
    (
        (
            lang = 1
            AND letter = 'E'
        )
        OR
        (
            lang = 2
            AND letter = '2'
        )
    )
)