speed up deleting million of records from a table with one filter

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speed up deleting million of records from a table with one filter

kuppurajdpm

SSC Veteran

Points: 231
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November 8, 2012 at 12:14 am

#393556

hi all,
I want to delete million of records from a table with only one filter of varchar(1) column
for that which one is best option.....

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Koen Verbeeck SSC Guru Points: 259115 More actions · Answer 1

What do you mean with filter?

Something like this?

DELETE FROM myTable WHERE columnA = 'B'

ps: why define a VARCHAR(1) column? What is wrong with CHAR(1). If you do have millions of rows, you're literally throwing storage away!

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kuppurajdpm SSC Veteran Points: 231 More actions · Answer 2

hi

It's actually char(1) column only.I am not asking abt that.

I am asking batch processing is better or any other option will be better.

Because I am going to delete million of records it's time consuming process.so that I am asking...

Koen Verbeeck SSC Guru Points: 259115 More actions · Answer 3

kuppurajdpm (11/8/2012)
hi
It's actually char(1) column only.I am not asking abt that.
I am asking batch processing is better or any other option will be better.
Because I am going to delete million of records it's time consuming process.so that I am asking...

And I asked something about the filter. It's important that we know exactly what you're trying to achieve.

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My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP

peterdru401 Mr or Mrs. 500 Points: 535 More actions · Answer 4

Simplest solution is to use a WITH. e.g.

WITH results ( <select> ) DELETE FROM results –

Sean Lange SSC Guru Points: 286590 More actions · Answer 5

If you want to prevent locking your table for an extended period of time you can do this in batches.

--This will ensure that the value of @@ROWCOUNT for the loop will be > 0

select 1

while @@ROWCOUNT > 0

begin

with DeleteList as (select top 1000 columnA from MyTable order by [Clustered Index])

--order by clustered index so the engine should not have to revisit any given page more than neccesary.

delete DeleteList

end

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ScottPletcher SSC Guru Points: 101120 More actions · Answer 6

It depends. Often it's faster just to keep the desired rows rather than delete all the undesired. That is, copy the good rows to another table, trunc the table, copy the good rows back in.

Otherwise you can DELETE in batches as Sean suggests ... but don't forget the filter on the DELETE statement itself :-).

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CapnHector SSCoach Points: 16143 More actions · Answer 7

ScottPletcher (11/8/2012)
It depends. Often it's faster just to keep the desired rows rather than delete all the undesired. That is, copy the good rows to another table, trunc the table, copy the good rows back in.
Otherwise you can DELETE in batches as Sean suggests ... but don't forget the filter on the DELETE statement itself :-).

If im only keeping a small number of rows i will insert the rows into a new table but instead of truncating and reinserting the rows i will rename the tables. this will have much less down time as i dont have to reinsert the records into the original table after the truncate. once the tables are renamed i can keep the old table around to make sure every thing is working fine then just drop the table. Personally i think this method has a little more redundancy as the data is never gone until im sure i have every thing i need.

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