How do I 'subtract' sql tables?

Question

Its not really a subtraction I\'m looking for. And I know its not a union or intersection... I have been given a long and complex stored procedure that returns a table of

Answer 1

The set operation you are looking for is called MINUS, but in SQL Server the keyword is EXCEPT

  SELECT ... // all documents
  EXCEPT
  SELECT ... // active documents

I believe that the EXCEPT set operation became available in SQL Server 2005.