Why the following cmds in sequence do not work

• hoa.nguyen 64423

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  February 6, 2026 at 3:01 am

  #4730841

  I need to delete rows from both the temporal main and history tables.

  The temporal main table can get deleted without issues.

  For the temporal history tables, I code to turn system versioning off, issue the Delete, then turn system versioning back on.

  If I execute manually each of the below cmds one at a time, they all work without an error.

  But if I execute the whole 3-line unit of code, it errors.

  I have hundreds of temporal history tables to delete so I cannot be executing the cmds one at a time...

  Appreciate your attention and help.

  

• hoa.nguyen 64423

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  February 6, 2026 at 3:15 am

  #4730842

  Serializing made no difference... Manual run of each cmd takes sub-seconds...

  

• Phil Parkin

  SSC Guru

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  February 6, 2026 at 8:40 am

  #4730970

  Try putting 'GO' after each statement.

  ALTER ...
  GO
  DELETE...
  GO

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• frederico_fonseca

  SSCoach

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  February 6, 2026 at 9:10 am

  #4730997

  see this link https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/tables/manage-retention-of-historical-data-in-system-versioned-temporal-tables?view=sql-server-ver17

  scroll down to "Use custom cleanup script approach"

• hoa.nguyen 64423

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  February 6, 2026 at 2:36 pm

  #4731324

  This works.  I will have to take the dynamic sql approach as coded on the article.  Thank you very much!

• hoa.nguyen 64423

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  February 6, 2026 at 2:38 pm

  #4731325

  I am coding an sproc so I cannot code many GOs.  Thanks for helping!