question

No, not with EXCEPT. What EXCEPT does is to compare two sets and return the members from one set which does not exist in the other set. What's returned is the whole member, not just some of the member attributes. In databases, the set is a table (or with EXCEPT it's in fact a query which could be a table or the result of a query which mashes up tons of info from several tables). If what you really want to do is to compare members to each other and find out which attributes are different, you'd have to compare members to each other using eg a JOIN. If you have key attributes you'd join on them, and then in the select list you could use something like CASE WHEN SetA.Attribute1 = SetB.Attribute1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 AS IsAttribute1Different. If you wrap that query in eg a CTE, you could then add a WHERE clause which looks at rows where the sum of IsAttributeNDifferent > 0 to find which rows are different. Something like this: WITH CTE AS ( SELECT A.KeyColumn, CASE WHEN A.Attribute1=B.Attribute1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 AS IsAttribute1Different, CASE WHEN A.Attribute2=B.Attribute2 THEN 0 ELSE 1 AS IsAttribute2Different, ... FROM TableA A INNER JOIN TableB B ON A.KeyColumn = B.KeyColumn )SELECT * FROM CTE WHERE IsAttribute1Different + IsAttribute2Different + ... + ISAttributeNDifferent > 0 That would give you a result set with the key-column and ones and zeros to tell if the column is different or not. Save that in a temp-table or so and join it to the two tables to find out actual values from tables A and B.

declare @a table (ID int, Val char(1));
declare @b table (ID int, Val char(1));
insert into @a values (1, 'a'), (2, 'b');
insert into @b values (1, 'a'), (2, 'b');
-- nothing is returned, data is identical
select * from @a except select * from @b;
-- ID          Val
-- ----------- ----
-- update one row in b
update @b set Val = 'd' where ID = 1;
-- insert one row in a
insert into @a values (4, 'f')
-- The rows from a with ID in (1, 4) are returned: ID = 1 has been 
-- modified in b, and ID = 4 is a new row in a.
-- There is no way to know why exactly the rows appear in the results
select * from @a except select * from @b;
-- ID          Val
-- ----------- ----
-- 1           a
-- 4           f
-- Insert one row in b to see that even though the row has been inserted in b 
-- it is not included in the results
insert into @b values (5, 'g')
select * from @a except select * from @b;
-- ID          Val
-- ----------- ----
-- 1           a
-- 4           f