Question

I’ve got a situation where I updated one table with some 3rd party utility, and I want to compare it to the original table and make sure it made the correct mount of updates and inserts.

So, I’d like to do something like this, but I don’t quite know the syntax:

SELECT * FROM table1 AS a RIGHT OUTER JOIN table2 AS b WHERE 
    <there is some difference between the row from a and the row from b,
    regardless of which column it's in>

How can I compare all the fields without having to explicitly write them all one by 1?

EDIT: I should also mention that I did the update in a copy of the table, so assume is the original and is the updated copy.

Answer 1

What you should use is a MINUS query

select field1, field2, field3, field4
  from table1
 except 
select field1, field2, field3, field4
  from table2

this returns all rows from table1 that whose data (field1, field2, field3, field4) can not be found on table2. Warining: it does not the other way around, so if you also need the data that is in table2 and not on table1, then you have to do a second query doing table2 MINUS table1.