Access database issue.

[Brian Percival]

I don't know if this is the exact place for this q, but I am trying anyway.
I have a access database table of say a million and a half records. I have an excel file of say 25000 records.

the excel file has customer list with their phone numbers, the access table has do not call list of numbers.

I have to filter customer list for these do not call list and spit out two excel files, one clean file and the other with the filtered numbers.

Since the database what is the fastest method for this?

I am trying, in order to make the whole thing SQL, I am first copying the excel file as a table and doing kind of

select blah from blah where blah not in (select blah from ...)

Still it is slow.. Access really sucks. Am wondering if there are any better algorithms.


regards,
Brian

[Balazs Borbely]

You could try something like this:

    
 
--banned 
SELECT et.column1, et.column2, ... FROM excel_table et 
WHERE 
  EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM acces_table at WHERE et.phone_number = at.phone_number AND at.banned = true) 
 
--callable
SELECT et.column1, et.column2, ... FROM excel_table et 
WHERE 
  EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM acces_table at WHERE et.phone_number = at.phone_number AND at.banned = false) 
 

With the folowing preconditions.
- index on et.phone_number, at.phone_number, at.banned
- 'SELECT et.column1, et.column2, ... ' should have the minimum number of column required by application


PS. as a general rule EXISTS has a better performance than IN in most of the cases
[ March 03, 2006: Message edited by: Balazs Borbely ]

[Brian Percival]

Bolazs,

Thanks for your reply. I will try that.

regards,
Brian