PHP array_diff VS mysql NOT IN
mysql, php
Solution
If your main table has 50k rows, using a sub select in your query will result into 1 + 50k executions of selects. One for the first table, and 50k selects, one for each row. The server compares the row with your sub select that is reloaded every time iterating the main table. This is why your sql code takes its time and it also may be a huge memory problem as well.
See serjoschas information about joins to fix it in sql, it should be even faster that your php solution.
Checking which values are missing within a table (compared to another) can easily be done with a LEFT or RIGHT JOIN they are just made for actions like this.. alternatively take a look at this: How to Find Missing Value Between Two Mysql Tables – serjoscha
One solution to:
SELECT code FROM t1
WHERE code NOT IN ( SELECT code FROM t2 )
will be:
SELECT t1.code
FROM t1
LEFT JOIN t2
ON t1.code = t2.code
WHERE t2.code is null
Have a try. Also have a look on indexing as Cyclone suggests:
If you don't have an index you should definitly add one since this will speed up your query. You could add an index like this: ALTER TABLE ADD INDEX code_idx (code) this should be done for both tables. If you then were to execute EXPLAIN for the query you would see something like Using where; Using index; Using join buffer which is good – Cyclone
Indexing speeds up your query. If the table only provides one column, searching an index table with the same content as the source table will be exactly the same and redundant. Otherwise I strongly recommend indexing the code column of t2 which leads to a high increase of performance and less memory consumtion.
Problem
I tried to compare two zipcode columns between two tables to see if values were missing in the second one. I first wanted to do it with mysql, my query was something like ``` 'SELECT code FROM t1 WHERE t1 NOT IN (select code FROM t2)' ``` But it was really slow so I tried another way : I made two select, and then compared the results with `array_diff()`. With mysql : few minutes, and sometimes crash With PHP : less than 1 second. Can someone explain these differences ? Is my SQL query wrong ?