Let’s say you have two database tables that are supposed to have the same record IDs. Perhaps they contain different data but share the same ID — for this example, we call it “user_id”. This query will select only the missing records of the right joined table.

SELECT a.user_id, a.other_detail, b.user_id FROM tablea a LEFT JOIN tableb b ON a.user_id=b.user_id WHERE b.user_id IS NULL

Since the “right” table is joining the “left” table with a left join, any missing records will actually be nullified since it doesn’t exist, so when you select both shared IDs from each table, “a.user_id” will still contain the number. It’s a pretty nifty query that has saved me time iterating through values and looping through with a script. This is a good example to reference in the future.