Question

The following query works:

select count(*) from everything where num not in (select num from sometable)

The following query is supposed to be equivalent to the above, but results in an “invalid identifier” error:

with unwanted as (select num from sometable)
select count(*) from everything where num not in unwanted

What is wrong with the second query?

Answer 1

the syntax is like this:

with unwanted as (select num from sometable)
select count(*) from everything where num not in (select * from unwanted)

obviously this makes only sense if the select num from sometable part is a bit more complex or used several times later…