If you’re getting error “ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column ‘colname’ in ‘order clause’” in MariaDB, it may be that you’re trying to reference an aliased column by its column name.
This is a common error when running queries that join two or more tables. It can also happen when using operators such as UNION, INTERSECT, and EXCEPT.
There are at least a few possible reasons you might be getting the dreaded error 1064 (42000) that reads “You have an error in your SQL syntax…” etc when trying to use the MINUS operator in MariaDB.
I’ll explore these below and offer some solutions.
In MySQL, the UNION clause combines the results from multiple queries into a single result set.
In Oracle Database, the MINUS operator is used to return only unique rows returned by the first query but not by the second.
In PostgreSQL, the UNION operator combines the results from multiple queries into a single result set.
In PostgreSQL, the INTERSECT operator combines two queries, but returns only those rows that are returned in both queries.
In PostgreSQL, the EXCEPT operator returns rows that are returned by the left input query that aren’t returned by the right input query. This can also be referred to as the difference between two queries.
In Oracle Database, the UNION operator allows us to combine the results from two queries into a single result set.
In MariaDB, the MINUS operator returns distinct rows from the left input query that aren’t output by the right input query.
The MINUS operator was introduced in MariaDB 10.6.1 as a synonym for the EXCEPT operator for the purposes of compatibility with Oracle. Therefore, we can use MINUS and EXCEPT interchangeably (in MariaDB 10.6.1 and later).