I am unsure: Is this an anti-join? - mysql

Question

I am working on the first problem of the famous SQLzoos and am working on the using Null section: http://sqlzoo.net/wiki/Using_Null
The question is:
List the teachers who have NULL for their department.
The corresponding SQL query would be:
SELECT t.name
FROM teacher t
WHERE t.dept IS NULL
Is this a type of anti-join? Specifically, is this a left-anti-join?

Answer 1

This isn't a join at all.
The statement is filtering only records for teachers who don't have an assigned department.
Set Difference
The set difference of teachers and departments, teacher \ department would be a kind of "anti-join"
SELECT
t.name
FROM teacher t
LEFT JOIN department d ON d.id = t.dept_id
WHERE d.id IS NULL
At first glance, this statement does what your statement does, if the foreign key reference was enforced, it would guarantee to do exactly that. However, one use for this statement would be to retrieve teachers who are assigned to departments that have since been deleted (e.g. if the English Lit Dept. & English as 2nd Lang Dept. were reorganized as the English Dept.)
Symmetric Difference
Another "anti-join" would be the symmetric difference, which selects elements from both sets ONLY if they cannot be joined, i.e
(teacher \ department) U (department \ teacher)
I can't think of a motivating example using teachers and departments, but one way to write the symmetric difference on databases that support the FULL OUTER JOIN would be:
SELECT
t.name
FROM teacher t
FULL OUTER JOIN department d ON d.id = t.dept_id
WHERE d.id IS NULL OR t.id IS NULL
For MySQL, this statement would have to be written as the union of two statements.
SELECT
t.name teacher_name, d.name department_name
FROM teacher t
LEFT JOIN department d ON d.id = t.dept_id
WHERE d.id IS NULL
UNION ALL
SELECT
t.name teacher_name, d.name department_name
FROM teacher t
LEFT JOIN department d ON d.id = t.dept_id
WHERE t.id IS NULL
Looking through one of my projects, I found this one use of symmetric difference:
Context:
I have three tables: users, users_gameplay_summary, users_transactions_summary. I needed to email those users who created their accounts in the past 7 days AND one of the following
have transacted but have not played or played but have not transacted.
To get the list, I have this query (note, this was written for Postgresql, and won't work on MySQL, but it illustrates the symmetric difference use case):
SELECT
COALESCE(g.user_id, t.user_id) user_id
FROM users_gameplay_summary g
FULL OUTER JOIN users_transactions_summary t ON t.user_id = g.user_id
WHERE COALESCE(g.user_id, t.user_id) IN (
SELECT user_id
FROM users
WHERE created_at > CURRENT_DATE - '7 day'::interval)
AND (g.user_id IS NULL OR t.user_id IS NULL)

Answer 2

Not exactly, your not actually joining anything now,
in the case of a left anti join you would have access to the department name as well. (although it would be NULL)
Your sql code would be a correct answer for the question you gave though.
A left anti join would be:
SELECT t.name
FROM teacher t
LEFT JOIN dept d ON d.id = t.dept
WHERE d.id IS NULL

Answer 3

To solve this problem of listing teachers without assigned departments, you don't need a JOIN between teacher and dept tables.
dept table is basically a dictionary table that you join to, to translate ids to corresponding names.
teacher table has a dept column which normally could have a FOREIGN KEY constraint to id column in dept table.
Your query is not an ANTI-JOIN. This is a simple projection and selection query using one table.
SELECT t.name
FROM teacher t
WHERE t.dept IS NULL
For an ANTI-JOIN you would at least need a JOIN operation between more than one table at first.
Normally an ANTI-JOIN could look like:
Using LEFT JOIN
SELECT *
FROM table1 t1
LEFT JOIN table2 t2
ON t1.join_column = t2.join_column
WHERE t2.join_column IS NULL
Using NOT EXISTS
SELECT *
FROM table1 t1
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT 1
FROM table2 t2
WHERE t1.join_column = t2.join_column
)