How to rewrite a NOT IN subquery as join - mysql

Question

Let's assume that the following tables in MySQL describe documents contained in folders.
mysql> select * from folder;
+----+----------------+
| ID | PATH |
+----+----------------+
| 1 | matches/1 |
| 2 | matches/2 |
| 3 | shared/3 |
| 4 | no/match/4 |
| 5 | unreferenced/5 |
+----+----------------+
mysql> select * from DOC;
+----+------+------------+
| ID | F_ID | DATE |
+----+------+------------+
| 1 | 1 | 2000-01-01 |
| 2 | 2 | 2000-01-02 |
| 3 | 2 | 2000-01-03 |
| 4 | 3 | 2000-01-04 |
| 5 | 3 | 2000-01-05 |
| 6 | 3 | 2000-01-06 |
| 7 | 4 | 2000-01-07 |
| 8 | 4 | 2000-01-08 |
| 9 | 4 | 2000-01-09 |
| 10 | 4 | 2000-01-10 |
+----+------+------------+
The columns ID are the primary keys and the column F_ID of table DOC is a not-null foreign key that references the primary key of table FOLDER. By using the 'DATE' of documents in the where clause, I would like to find which folders contain only the selected documents. For documents earlier than 2000-01-05, this could be written as:
SELECT DISTINCT d1.F_ID
FROM DOC d1
WHERE d1.DATE < '2000-01-05'
AND d1.F_ID NOT IN (
SELECT d2.F_ID
FROM DOC d2 WHERE NOT (d2.DATE < '2000-01-05')
);
and it correctly returns '1' and '2'. By reading
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/rewriting-subqueries.html
the performance for big tables could be improved if the subquery is replaced with a join. I already found questions related to NOT IN and JOINS but not exactly what I was looking for. So, any ideas of how this could be written with joins ?

Answer 1

The general answer is:
select t.*
from t
where t.id not in (select id from s)
Can be rewritten as:
select t.*
from t left outer join
(select distinct id from s) s
on t.id = s.id
where s.id is null
I think you can apply this to your situation.

Answer 2

select distinct d1.F_ID
from DOC d1
left outer join (
select F_ID
from DOC
where date >= '2000-01-05'
) d2 on d1.F_ID = d2.F_ID
where d1.date < '2000-01-05'
and d2.F_ID is null

Answer 3

If I understand your question correctly, that you want to find the F_IDs representing folders which only contains documents from before '2000-01-05', then simply
SELECT F_ID
FROM DOC
GROUP BY F_ID
HAVING MAX(DATE) < '2000-01-05'

Answer 4

Sample Table and Insert Statements
CREATE TABLE `tleft` (
`id` int(2) NOT NULL,
`name` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
CREATE TABLE `tright` (
`id` int(2) NOT NULL,
`t_left_id` int(2) DEFAULT NULL,
`description` varchar(100) DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8
INSERT INTO `tleft` (`id`, `name`)
VALUES
(1, 'henry'),
(2, 'steve'),
(3, 'jeff'),
(4, 'richards'),
(5, 'elon');
INSERT INTO `tright` (`id`, `t_left_id`, `description`)
VALUES
(1, 1, 'sample'),
(2, 2, 'sample');
Left Join : SELECT l.id,l.name FROM tleft l LEFT JOIN tright r ON l.id = r.t_left_id ;
Returns Id : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Right Join : SELECT l.id,l.name FROM tleft l RIGHT JOIN tright r ON l.id = r.t_left_id ;
Returns Id : 1,2
Subquery Not in tright : select id from tleft where id not in ( select t_left_id from tright);
Returns Id : 3,4,5
Equivalent Join For above subquery :
SELECT l.id,l.name FROM tleft l LEFT JOIN tright r ON l.id = r.t_left_id WHERE r.t_left_id IS NULL;
AND clause will be applied during the JOIN and WHERE clause will be applied after the JOIN .
Example : SELECT l.id,l.name FROM tleft l LEFT JOIN tright r ON l.id = r.t_left_id AND r.description ='hello' WHERE r.t_left_id IS NULL ;
Hope this helps