Question

I’m fairly new to coding in T-SQL and have run into an issue I have yet to find and answer. I was hoping the experts here and tell me where I have gone wrong.

I am trying to compare 2 columns of serial numbers with a not in statement and it works perfectly if there are only numbers in the columns but if there is a letter in the serial number it just kicks back all the records instead of just the records that are not in the second table. Below is my query I hope someone can point out what I have done wrong. Thank you in advance.

@Transaction varchar (50)

AS

    SET NOCOUNT ON;

SELECT       transaction, equiptype, serialnum

FROM             table1

WHERE           ( serialnum NOT IN
        (SELECT serial_num
                      FROM   table2 ) AND transaction = @Transaction)

P.S. a is my transaction number I am filtering the record by

table1-

     [transaction] [equiptype] [serialnum]
       12345678        12         56742
       12345678        11         87529
       12345678         8         46259
       87654321         8          the143
       87654321        10          the527
       87654321        11          u3765

table2-

       [transdate]    [transaction]   [user]  [equiptype]  [serial_num] [status]
  7/28/11          12345678      test      12       56742     NewStock
        7/28/11        12345678      test         11         87529     NewStock
        7/28/11        87654321      test         11         u3765     NewStock
        7/28/11        87654321      test         10         the527    NewStock

Based off this data transaction 12345678 will only return the last record with serialnum 46259 and that works fine but if I try to do the same with transaction 87654321 it will return all records as if the NOT IN statment failed to run instead of serial number the143.

Answer 1

Maybe it’s the from Server Collation. Please try

SELECT TRANSACTION, equiptype, serialnum
FROM table1
WHERE  (serialnum  COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS  
        NOT IN (SELECT serial_num  COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS FROM table2 ) 
    AND TRANSACTION = @Transaction)