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

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kuppurajdpm

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 12:14 AM

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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.....

Post #1382289

Koen Verbeeck

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 12:48 AM

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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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Post #1382300

kuppurajdpm

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 1:29 AM

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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...

Post #1382316

Koen Verbeeck

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 1:39 AM

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kuppurajdpm (11/8/2012)

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

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Post #1382320

peterdru401

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 2:02 AM

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

WITH results ( <select> ) DELETE FROM results –

Post #1382332

Sean Lange

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 8:07 AM

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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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Post #1382514

ScottPletcher

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 5:01 PM

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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 Smile

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Post #1382771

CapnHector

Posted Thursday, November 08, 2012 5:48 PM

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ScottPletcher (11/8/2012)

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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