EXCEPT Key Word in SQL Server

Microsoft introduced the EXCEPT operator in SQL Server 2005, which returns all of the distinct rows from the left side of the EXCEPT operator. It also removes all of the rows from the result set that match the rows that are on the right side of the EXCEPT operator.


To return all rows in table1 that do not match exactly the rows in table2, we can just use EXCEPT like this:

select * from table1 except select * from table2