DELETE

The SQL DELETE statement is used to delete rows from a table. Generally DELETE statement removes one or more records from a table.

SQL DELETE Syntax

Let’s see the Syntax for the SQL DELETE statement:

DELETE FROM table_name [WHERE condition];  

Here table_name is the table which has to be deleted. The WHERE clause in SQL DELETE statement is optional here.

SQL DELETE Example

Let us take a table, named “EMPLOYEE” table.

ID	EMP_NAME	CITY	SALARY
101	Adarsh Singh	Obra	20000
102	Sanjay Singh	Meerut	21000
103	Priyanka Sharma	Raipur	25000
104	Esha Singhal	Delhi	26000

Example of delete with WHERE clause is given below:

DELETE FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE ID=101;  

Resulting table after the query:

ID	EMP_NAME	CITY	SALARY
102	Sanjay Singh	Meerut	21000
103	Priyanka Sharma	Raipur	25000
104	Esha Singhal	Delhi	26000

Another example of delete statement is given below

DELETE FROM EMPLOYEE;  

Resulting table after the query:

ID	EMP_NAME	CITY	SALARY

It will delete all the records of EMPLOYEE table.

It will delete the all the records of EMPLOYEE table where ID is 101.

The WHERE clause in the SQL DELETE statement is optional and it identifies the rows in the column that gets deleted.

WHERE clause is used to prevent the deletion of all the rows in the table, If you don’t use the WHERE clause you might loss all the rows.

Invalid DELETE Statement for ORACLE database

You cannot use * (asterisk) symbol to delete all the records.

DELETE * FROM EMPLOYEE;