DML: DELETE Statements

When you write a DELETE statement, it’s because you want to delete entire tuples from your table.

Just like UPDATE, we have a great deal of flexibility over how many tuples we delete. We can delete either:

  • all tuples
  • a subset of tuples
  • a single tuple

All tuples

Let’s delete all the tuples in dbo.Songs.

DELETE dbo.Songs;

Subset of Tuples

Let’s delete all the tuples in dbo.Songs that match to dbo.BadSongs.

DELETE A
FROM dbo.Songs AS a
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM dbo.BadSongs WHERE a.SongID = SongID);

Single Tuple

Let’s delete SongID = 1 from dbo.Songs.

DELETE dbo.Songs
WHERE SongID = 1;

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