How to find rows in one table that have no corresponding row in another table

select tableA.id from tableA left outer join tableB on (tableA.id = tableB.id)
where tableB.id is null
order by tableA.id desc 

If your db knows how to do index intersections, this will only touch the primary key index

You can also use exists, since sometimes it's faster than left join. You'd have to benchmark them to figure out which one you want to use.

select
    id
from
    tableA a
where
    not exists
    (select 1 from tableB b where b.id = a.id)

To show that exists can be more efficient than a left join, here's the execution plans of these queries in SQL Server 2008:

left join - total subtree cost: 1.09724:

exists - total subtree cost: 1.07421:

You have to check every ID in tableA against every ID in tableB. A fully featured RDBMS (such as Oracle) would be able to optimize that into an INDEX FULL FAST SCAN and not touch the table at all. I don't know whether H2's optimizer is as smart as that.

H2 does support the MINUS syntax so you should try this

select id from tableA
minus
select id from tableB
order by id desc

That may perform faster; it is certainly worth benchmarking.

For my small dataset, Oracle gives almost all of these queries the exact same plan that uses the primary key indexes without touching the table. The exception is the MINUS version which manages to do fewer consistent gets despite the higher plan cost.

--Create Sample Data.
d r o p table tableA;
d r o p table tableB;

create table tableA as (
   select rownum-1 ID, chr(rownum-1+70) bb, chr(rownum-1+100) cc 
      from dual connect by rownum<=4
);

create table tableB as (
   select rownum ID, chr(rownum+70) data1, chr(rownum+100) cc from dual
   UNION ALL
   select rownum+2 ID, chr(rownum+70) data1, chr(rownum+100) cc 
      from dual connect by rownum<=3
);

a l t e r table tableA Add Primary Key (ID);
a l t e r table tableB Add Primary Key (ID);

--View Tables.
select * from tableA;
select * from tableB;

--Find all rows in tableA that don't have a corresponding row in tableB.

--Method 1.
SELECT id FROM tableA WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT id FROM tableB) ORDER BY id DESC;

--Method 2.
SELECT tableA.id FROM tableA LEFT JOIN tableB ON (tableA.id = tableB.id)
WHERE tableB.id IS NULL ORDER BY tableA.id DESC;

--Method 3.
SELECT id FROM tableA a WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM tableB b WHERE b.id = a.id) 
   ORDER BY id DESC;

--Method 4.
SELECT id FROM tableA
MINUS
SELECT id FROM tableB ORDER BY id DESC;

I can't tell you which of these methods will be best on H2 (or even if all of them will work), but I did write an article detailing all of the (good) methods available in TSQL. You can give them a shot and see if any of them works for you:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/SQLExamples/Wiki/View.aspx?title=QueryBasedUponAbsenceOfData&referringTitle=Home