MYSQL Return lines whose sum of one field equals another tables field

This is an UNPIVOT problem.To get the sum of credit items and the sum of debit items you can use a SUM of a CASE statement. To show that, we need a table first:

SQL Fiddle

MySQL 5.5.32 Schema Setup:

CREATE TABLE invoice_items
    (`invoice_item_id` int, `invoice_set_id` varchar(3), `credit_debit` varchar(6), `amount` int)
;

INSERT INTO invoice_items
    (`invoice_item_id`, `invoice_set_id`, `credit_debit`, `amount`)
VALUES
    (62, 'a22', 'debit', 15.00),
    (63, 'a22', 'debit', 8.00),
    (64, 'a22', 'credit', 23.00),
    (65, 'b23', 'debit', 44.00),
    (66, 'c55', 'debit', 15.00),
    (67, 'c55', 'debit', 2.00),
    (67, 'c55', 'credit', 8.00)
;

Now you can combine SUM and CASE like this: Query 1:

SELECT invoice_set_id,
       SUM(CASE WHEN credit_debit = 'debit' THEN amount END) AS debit_amount,
       SUM(CASE WHEN credit_debit = 'credit' THEN amount END) AS credit_amount
  FROM invoice_items
 GROUP BY invoice_set_id;

Results:

| INVOICE_SET_ID | DEBIT_AMOUNT | CREDIT_AMOUNT |
|----------------|--------------|---------------|
|            a22 |           23 |            23 |
|            b23 |           44 |        (null) |
|            c55 |           17 |             8 |

From here it is fairly simple to filter out the unwanted rows. We just need to wrap the two sums in COALESCE statements to turn NULL into 0:

Query 2:

SELECT invoice_set_id
  FROM(
    SELECT invoice_set_id,
           SUM(CASE WHEN credit_debit = 'debit' THEN amount END) AS debit_amount,
           SUM(CASE WHEN credit_debit = 'credit' THEN amount END) AS credit_amount
      FROM invoice_items
     GROUP BY invoice_set_id
  )X
WHERE COALESCE(debit_amount,0) > COALESCE(credit_amount,0);

Results:

| INVOICE_SET_ID |
|----------------|
|            b23 |
|            c55 |

If your actual problem is as simple as your example and you do not need the intermediate values for anything else, you can get the result also by just changing the sign of the amount based on the credit_debit value before calculating the sum. That would look like this:

Query 3:

SELECT invoice_set_id
  FROM invoice_items
 GROUP BY invoice_set_id
HAVING SUM(CASE WHEN credit_debit = 'debit' THEN amount ELSE -amount END)>0;

Results:

| INVOICE_SET_ID |
|----------------|
|            b23 |
|            c55 |

Even if SQL were to support a "pointer" like you describe, the pointer itself would take some memory. Ironically, the pointer might even be larger than the integer value it points to.

You tagged this question with MySQL, so I'll answer with respect to MySQL: there is no support for this pointer concept. In a relational database, columns contain values, not pointers.

Constraints are part of the table's metadata, and serve to make sure the value in the foreign key column does not get out of sync with the key column it references. Either it block changes, or duplicates changes if you declare the foreign key constraint with cascading effects.

Other implementations of RDBMS might have this feature, but not MySQL.