How Can I Achieve the Equivalent of a MINUS Operation in MySQL?

MySQL's Limitation with MINUS Operation

MySQL lacks native support for the MINUS operation, commonly found in Oracle. However, users can employ alternative approaches to achieve similar results.

Using NOT IN

MySQL provides the NOT IN clause as a viable substitute for MINUS. This clause allows users to exclude rows from a query result that exist in a specific subquery.

Consider the following example:

SELECT DISTINCT Service_Code
FROM Service_Details
WHERE Service_Code NOT IN (
    SELECT Service_Code
    FROM Exception
);

This query retrieves the service codes that are not associated with any exceptions, effectively performing a MINUS operation between the Service_Details and Exception tables.

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