Comparing 2 Tables

[Geee]

Help!

I have a table of users which is updated once a week by the client sending me a spreadsheet, and me uploading the CSV to my scripts which then import the data into the user table. This all works fine. However instead of sending me incremental data that can be just imported, the client has now taken to sending me a complete data list. The problem with this is that I cannot just empty the user table and re-populate with the new data as I will lose the primary key values which I use elsewhere.

My solution to this was to create a new table for importing with the same structure as my user table, import the csv to there, then somehow compare the tables and add the rows missing from the import table into the user table.

My question then, is this possible using a SQL query. Can I compare 2 tables, and add missing data from 1 into the other as new records? I could code a software solution, but with around 30k records in the user table I think a SQL query would be the best approach.

-Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-
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http://www.gtmconsult.co.uk=-

 

[TonyGroves]

Sure, just use "INSERT IGNORE tablename ..." or "LOAD DATA INFILE 'filepath' IGNORE INTO TABLE tablename ...", which will discard any duplicates.