Re: correlated delete with 'in' and 'left outer join'

The subquery will always return a row from LogEvent, but that row's itemID
will be null if theitemID doesn't match a row from Item.  That's why the subquery has the
"and i.ItemID is null".

> Stephan Szabo wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 mike@linkify.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm using postgresl 7.3.2 and have a query that executes very slowly.
>>>
>>>There are 2 tables: Item and LogEvent.  ItemID (an int4) is the
>>>primary key of Item, and is also a field in LogEvent.  Some ItemIDs in
>>>LogEvent do not correspond to ItemIDs in Item, and periodically we
>>>need to purge the non-matching ItemIDs from LogEvent.
>>>
>>>The query is:
>>>
>>>delete from LogEvent where EventType != 'i' and ItemID in
>>>(select distinct e.ItemID from LogEvent e left outer join Item i on
>>>e.ItemID = i.ItemID where e.EventType != 'i' and i.ItemID is null);
>>>
>>>I understand that using "in" is not very efficient.
>>>
>>>Is there some other way to write this query without the "in"?
>>
>>
>> Perhaps
>> delete from LogEvent where EventType != 'i' and not exists
>>  (select * from Item i where i.ItemID=LogEvent.ItemID);
>
> Maybe I'm not reading his subquery correctly, but the left outer
> join will produce a row from LogEvent regardless of whether or not a
> matching row exists in Item, correct? So doesn't it reduce to:
>
> DELETE FROM LogEvent WHERE EventType <> 'i';
>
> ???
>
> Mike Mascari