Your DBA dropped PUBS on your DEV box? Bit over-zealous isn't he/she? I can understand and agree in production, but pubs and northwind can be very handy in dev/test environments.
Hope these results post ok...
select * from authors a
where NOT EXISTS (select * from titleauthor ta where ta.au_id = a.au_id)
(3 row(s) affected)
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|--Nested Loops(Left Anti Semi Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([a].[au_id]))
|--Compute Scalar(DEFINE:([a].[mvgtest]=substring([a].[au_lname], 1, 10)))
| |--Clustered Index Scan(OBJECT:([pubs].[dbo].[authors].[UPKCL_auidind] AS [a]))
|--Index Seek(OBJECT:([pubs].[dbo].[titleauthor].[auidind] AS [ta]), SEEK:([ta].[au_id]=[a].[au_id]) ORDERED FORWARD)
(4 row(s) affected)
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select * from titles t
where NOT EXISTS (select * from titleauthor ta where ta.title_id = t.title_id)
(1 row(s) affected)
StmtText
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|--Nested Loops(Left Anti Semi Join, OUTER REFERENCES:([t].[title_id]))
|--Clustered Index Scan(OBJECT:([pubs].[dbo].[titles].[UPKCL_titleidind] AS [t]))
|--Index Seek(OBJECT:([pubs].[dbo].[titleauthor].[titleidind] AS [ta]), SEEK:([ta].[title_id]=[t].[title_id]) ORDERED FORWARD)
(3 row(s) affected)
StmtText
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
select * from titles t
where NOT EXISTS (select * from titleauthor ta where upper(ta.title_id) = upper(t.title_id))
(1 row(s) affected)
StmtText
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|--Nested Loops(Left Anti Semi Join, WHERE:(upper([ta].[title_id])=upper([t].[title_id])))
|--Clustered Index Scan(OBJECT:([pubs].[dbo].[titles].[UPKCL_titleidind] AS [t]))
|--Index Scan(OBJECT:([pubs].[dbo].[titleauthor].[titleidind] AS [ta]))
(3 row(s) affected)
Cheers,
- Mark