# DELETE
The DELETE statement is used to delete records from a table.
# DELETE all rows
Omitting a WHERE
clause will delete all rows from a table.
DELETE FROM Employees
See TRUNCATE (opens new window) documentation for details on how TRUNCATE performance can be better because it ignores triggers and indexes and logs to just delete the data.
# DELETE certain rows with WHERE
This will delete all rows that match the WHERE
criteria.
DELETE FROM Employees
WHERE FName = 'John'
# TRUNCATE clause
Use this to reset the table to the condition at which it was created. This deletes all rows and resets values such as auto-increment. It also doesn't log each individual row deletion.
TRUNCATE TABLE Employees
# DELETE certain rows based upon comparisons with other tables
It is possible to DELETE
data from a table if it matches (or mismatches) certain data in other tables.
Let's assume we want to DELETE
data from Source once its loaded into Target.
DELETE FROM Source
WHERE EXISTS ( SELECT 1 -- specific value in SELECT doesn't matter
FROM Target
Where Source.ID = Target.ID )
Most common RDBMS implementations (e.g. MySQL, Oracle, PostgresSQL, Teradata) allow tables to be joined during DELETE
allowing more complex comparison in a compact syntax.
Adding complexity to original scenario, let's assume Aggregate is built from Target once a day and does not contain the same ID but contains the same date. Let us also assume that we want to delete data from Source only after the aggregate is populated for the day.
On MySQL, Oracle and Teradata this can be done using:
DELETE FROM Source
WHERE Source.ID = TargetSchema.Target.ID
AND TargetSchema.Target.Date = AggregateSchema.Aggregate.Date
In PostgreSQL use:
DELETE FROM Source
USING TargetSchema.Target, AggregateSchema.Aggregate
WHERE Source.ID = TargetSchema.Target.ID
AND TargetSchema.Target.DataDate = AggregateSchema.Aggregate.AggDate
This essentially results in INNER JOINs between Source, Target and Aggregate. The deletion is performed on Source when the same IDs exist in Target AND date present in Target for those IDs also exists in Aggregate.
Same query may also be written (on MySQL, Oracle, Teradata) as:
DELETE Source
FROM Source, TargetSchema.Target, AggregateSchema.Aggregate
WHERE Source.ID = TargetSchema.Target.ID
AND TargetSchema.Target.DataDate = AggregateSchema.Aggregate.AggDate
Explicit joins may be mentioned in Delete
statements on some RDBMS implementations (e.g. Oracle, MySQL) but not supported on all platforms (e.g. Teradata does not support them)
Comparisons can be designed to check mismatch scenarios instead of matching ones with all syntax styles (observe NOT EXISTS
below)
DELETE FROM Source
WHERE NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 -- specific value in SELECT doesn't matter
FROM Target
Where Source.ID = Target.ID )
# Syntax
- DELETE FROM TableName [WHERE Condition] [LIMIT count]