need help tuning a very large delete

Stage Table has 17 million records with Delete_column = 'Y';

MAster has 27 million records.

so I need to
delete from master
where master.pk = stage.pk
and stage.pk = 'Y';

i tried writing a 'create table as' with a 'not exists' and was running for 8 hours. killed it. didnt even go to 'killed' status which means the DML hadnt even started it.

I tried doing the following: but cant get the outer join right. Is that faster than a minus?

any ideas? Received on Wed Sep 17 2003 - 14:45:59 CDT