Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 21 Days, Fourth Edition

Removing Information with the DELETE Statement

In addition to adding data to a database, you will also need to delete data from a database. The syntax for the DELETE statement is

DELETE FROM tablename
WHERE condition

The first thing you will probably notice about the DELETE command is that it doesn't have a prompt. Users are accustomed to being prompted for assurance when, for instance, a directory or file is deleted at the operating system level. Are you sure? (Y/N) is a common question asked before the operation is performed. Using SQL, when you instruct the database management system (DBMS) to delete a group of records from a table, it obeys ...