[ WITH temporary-views ] main-query-block
  EXCEPT [ ALL | DISTINCT ] except-query-block
[ ORDER BY  [ integer | select-list-expression-name ] [ ASC | DESC ], ... ]
[ FOR XML xml-mode ]
[ OPTION( query-hint, ... ) ]

query-hint :
MATERIALIZED VIEW OPTIMIZATION option-value
| FORCE OPTIMIZATION
| option-name = option-value

main-query-block :  query-block. See Common elements in SQL syntax.

except-query-block : query-block. See Common elements in SQL syntax.

option-name : identifier

option-value : 
hostvar (indicator allowed)
| string
| identifier
| number

The EXCEPT statement returns all rows in main-query-block except those that also appear in the except-query-block. Specify EXCEPT or EXCEPT DISTINCT if you do not want duplicates from main-query-block to appear as duplicates in the result. Otherwise, specify EXCEPT ALL. Note that query blocks can be nested.

The use of EXCEPT alone is equivalent to EXCEPT DISTINCT.

The main-query-block and the except-query-block must be UNION-compatible; they must each have the same number of items in their respective SELECT lists, and the types of each expression should be comparable. If corresponding items in two SELECT lists have different data types, SQL Anywhere chooses a data type for the corresponding column in the result and automatically convert the columns in each query-block appropriately.

EXCEPT ALL implements bag difference rather than set difference. For example, if main-query-block contains 5 (duplicate) rows with specific values, and except-query-block contains 2 duplicate rows with identical values, then EXCEPT ALL will return 3 rows.

The results of EXCEPT are the same as the results of EXCEPT ALL if main-query-block does not contain duplicate rows.

The column names displayed are the same column names that are displayed for the first query-block and these names are used to determine the expression names to be matched with the ORDER BY clause. An alternative way of customizing result set column names is to use a common table expression (the WITH clause).

Must have SELECT permission for each query-block.

None

• INTERSECT statement
• UNION statement
• SELECT statement
• OPTION clause, SELECT statement

For examples of EXCEPT usage, see Set operators and NULL.