Set Logic

Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink®️ enables set logic operations on tables in SQL statements.

Example data

The following examples use these tables to show how the different logical operators work.

-- Create tables for the set logic operations.
CREATE TABLE t1(chr CHAR);
INSERT INTO t1 VALUES('c'), ('a'), ('b'), ('b'), ('c');

CREATE TABLE t2(chr CHAR);
INSERT INTO t2 VALUES('d'), ('e'), ('a'), ('b'), ('b');

EXCEPT

EXCEPT and EXCEPT ALL return the rows that are found in one table but not the other.

  • EXCEPT returns only distinct rows.
  • EXCEPT ALL doesn’t remove duplicates from the result rows.

The following code example shows output from the EXCEPT function on tables t1 and t2.

(SELECT chr FROM t1) EXCEPT (SELECT chr FROM t2);

Your output should resemble:

chr
c

The following code example shows output from the EXCEPT ALL function on tables t1 and t2.

(SELECT chr FROM t1) EXCEPT ALL (SELECT chr FROM t2);

Your output should resemble:

+----+
| chr|
+----+
|   c|
|   c|
+----+

EXISTS

SELECT user, amount
FROM orders
WHERE product EXISTS (
    SELECT product FROM NewProducts
)

Returns TRUE if the sub-query returns at least one row. Only supported if the operation can be rewritten in a join and group operation.

The optimizer rewrites the EXISTS operation into a join and group operation. For streaming queries, the required state for computing the query result might grow infinitely depending on the number of distinct input rows.

IN

Returns TRUE if an expression exists in a table sub-query. The sub-query table must consist of one column. This column must have the same data type as the expression.

SELECT user, amount
FROM orders
WHERE product IN (
    SELECT product FROM NewProducts
)

The optimizer rewrites the IN condition into a join and group operation. For streaming queries, the required state for computing the query result might grow infinitely depending on the number of distinct input rows.

INTERSECT

INTERSECT and INTERSECT ALL return the rows that are found in both tables.

  • INTERSECT returns only distinct rows.
  • INTERSECT ALL doesn’t remove duplicates from the result rows.

The following code example shows output from the INTERSECT function on tables t1 and t2.

(SELECT chr FROM t1) INTERSECT (SELECT chr FROM t2);

Your output should resemble:

chr
a
b

The following code example shows output from the INTERSECT ALL function on tables t1 and t2.

(SELECT chr FROM t1) INTERSECT ALL (SELECT chr FROM t2);

Your output should resemble:

chr
a
b
b

UNION

UNION and UNION ALL return the rows that are found in either table.

  • UNION returns only distinct rows.
  • UNION ALL doesn’t remove duplicates from the result rows.

The following code example shows output from the UNION function on tables t1 and t2.

(SELECT chr FROM view1) UNION (SELECT chr FROM view2);

Your output should resemble:

chr
c
a
b
d
e

The following code example shows output from the UNION ALL function on tables t1 and t2.

(SELECT chr FROM t1) UNION ALL (SELECT chr FROM t2);

Your output should resemble:

chr
c
a
b
b
c
d
e
a
b
b

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Note

This website includes content developed at the Apache Software Foundation under the terms of the Apache License v2.