Chad Callihan compares and contrasts:
We recently looked at looked at comparing schemas using Azure Data Studio. What if we need to compare tables by using a query? For this post we’ll compare using EXCEPT, NOT IN, and NOT EXISTS to find differences between two tables.
Our two tables to compare will be Comic and Comic_Copy. Based on counts, we have 48 more records in Comic than we do in Comic_Copy. Let’s find the differences.
In Chad’s specific query, NOT EXISTS works great. Where I like EXCEPT is when you need to see if any of the non-key columns differ. For example, if you also needed to compare titles for rows with the same ID and ensure those titles matched.