Question

I’ve the following table

|ID | NodeID |
|---|--------|
|1  | N001   |
|2  | N006   |
|3  | N0010  |
|4  | N0015  |
|5  | N0016  |

And the following CSV string

'N001','N002','N003','N004','N005','N006','N007'

How can i find the NodeIDs that are present IN the CSV string and are NOT IN the table?

Answer 1

There are several options depending on your environment and data size. Here are my most common two…

The Way I Prefer…

Insert the CSV values into a table, then do all the work using SQL…

INSERT INTO myTempTable (itemValue) ......

SELECT * FROM myTempTable WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM dataTable WHERE NodeID = itemValue)
-- Or...
SELECT * FROM myTempTable LEFT JOIN dataTable ON NodeID = itemValue WHERE NodeID IS NULL

Another option avoids the temp table, but requires client side processing…

1. Ensure the CSV is alpha-numerically ordered.
2. Select all NodeIDs that ARE in the CSV, alpha-numerically ordered.
3. Filter out the values found in step 2, from the original set of values.

Step 2 can simply be done as…

SELECT * FROM dataTable WHERE NodeID IN (yourCSV) ORDER BY NodeID