DELETE — Removing Rows

Deleting Rows with DELETE

DELETE FROM removes rows from a table. Like UPDATE, it should almost always include a WHERE clause to target specific rows.

-- Remove a specific student
DELETE FROM students WHERE id = 2;

-- Remove all enrolments for a course being retired
DELETE FROM enrolments WHERE course_id = 3;

-- Remove students with no enrolments
DELETE FROM students
WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT DISTINCT student_id FROM enrolments);

If you want to remove all rows from a table quickly, most databases offer TRUNCATE TABLE tablename. It is much faster than a full-table DELETE because it does not log each row deletion individually.