Question

This is the data in the database

robot_id    sequence_no x            y
ABC1234E    1         8888         9999
ABC1234E    2         8888         9999
ABC1234E    3         8888         9999 
ABC1234E    4         8888         9999
 BBC1        1        8888         9999
  BBC2      1         8888         9999
  BBC2      2         8888         9999
  BBC3      1         8888         9999

…..

I wish to exclude this resultset:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE robot_id=ABC1234E AND sequence_no='1'

This is what I should get:

  robot_id      sequence_no           x             y
ABC1234E                2         8888         9999
ABC1234E                3         8888         9999 
ABC1234E                4         8888         9999
    BBC1        1         8888         9999
  BBC2      1         8888         9999
  BBC2      2         8888         9999
  BBC3      1         8888         9999

…..

robot id and sequence_no are the primary keys in this table

Answer 1

Just for the fun of it, you can also use the (ANSI standard) except clause (minus in Oracle) which kind of “resembles” the way you asked the question:

select *
from the_table
except
select *
from the_table
where robot_id = 'ABC1234E' 
  and sequence_no = 1;

This will probably be slower than the other solutions though – but I thought I’d include it for completeness.

(Note that character literals have to be enclosed in single quotes and numbers don’t – just the other way round as you did in your question)