Truncating a MS SQL Server Express table with one record takes forever - sql

I am setting up a kind of test database in Microsoft SQL Server Express 2017. I have one main table with 10 columns, which is linked to 6 others, ie its primary key is the foreign key of 6 other tables.
I have populated this main table with just one record.
I need to truncate it - ie delete all the rows but not the table. I tried both truncate table and delete from but both take forever: after 4 minutes the query was still executing! I understand there are keys to check etc, but it's only one record. All the other tables are empty. This doesn't seem right. Any ideas what could be wrong and what I can do to fix it?

In response to the comment
It is probably uncommitted transactions, on your child tables.
You would first be deleting all the child records prior to deleting the parent table record. Is the child tables all empty?.
Do you have any uncommitted transactions in any of those tables? If you do then attempt to kill those sessions by engaging a dba.

A table that has foreign key constraints can't be truncated. Either you drop constraint, truncate table then re-create constraints Or make use of delete cascade. here is a link for same.
TRUNCATE TABLE is a DDL command, it cannot check to see whether the records in the table are being referenced by a record in the child table. In case of DELETE, database is able to make sure that it isn't being referenced by another record.

Related

Delete on cascade for oracle 11g

Is there any ways to perform delete on cascade without locking all the child tables.Also the delete is performed on the key which is not the foreign key in the child tables .The foreign key in the child tables is indexed.Currently the situation is that when the delete is happening the locks on all the child tables which does not allow inserts to occur because of the locks
thanks
sri
As a solution, you can add a field with two possible values "Y"/"N" ("1"/"0", etc) that will show that the record has been deleted already. Then you can build a job (it is ok for long term operation) This process will be working in background, it will be collecting deleted rows and delete them.
Second way, try to run your transaction, and when you see your table got a full lock execute:
ALTER TABLE <<YOUR_LOCKED_TABLE_NAME>> DISABLE TABLE LOCKS
Then your transaction has to finish with the exception ORA-00069, if so, your table is really locked and you have to check if you have B-Tree indexes on your foreign key and you don't use any bitmap indexes.

How to validate data in sql server?

I have an issue related to data in sql server. In my database some of the constraint were not enabled i.e. they were not checked , After some time working on it we found this issue that a parent rows can be deleted without deleting child, which was an issue. I enabled all the constraint in the database using query
ALTER TABLE tbl_name CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL
above query was executed on all the tables of that database without any error . But my concern is whether it will work or not , if it will work on the existing data then what will happen to that data whose parent table data has been deleted.
I want to know is there any way such that I can validate such data data whose parent record doesn't exist in the entire database. There are about 270 constraint containing FOREIGN KEY AND UNIQUE KEY . I don't want to go for manual option.
Please help me out.
ALTER TABLE tbl_name CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL
only re-enables the constraints. Importantly, the constraints are not checked against the existing data in the database (nor are they trusted by the optimizer). If you want that to occur, you need to specify WITH CHECK as well:
ALTER TABLE tbl_name WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL
(And yes, the word CHECK appears twice)
If you execute this, and there are orphaned child rows (or other invalid constraints), then the ALTER TABLE will fail with an error message. There's nothing SQL Server can do to fix this issue - it's for you to decide whether to a) remove the orphaned rows, or b) to re-create, in some manner, a suitable parent row for them.
You can also add the 'ON DELETE CASCADE' code to the end of foreign keys to prevent orphaned child rows from persisting.
This is more of a 'better practice' going forward than a solution, but I believe Damien_The_Unbeliever has answered your main question.

TRUNCATE TABLE query unable to execute in SSIS because of foreign key

I have a table Person which contains 2 fields.In my another database i have a Participant Table(also have 2 columns).From Participant Table i have to insert values into Person Table.
but before every insertion,i want truncate the person Table.
I have try it out with linking Execute Sql task to Data flow task.But it is showing error that a Primary Foreign key relation exists there.
If I understand correctly, SSIS has nothing to do with your real problem, which is that you want to truncate a table that is referenced by a foreign key constraint. That question has already been answered: Cannot truncate table because it is being referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint?
If a table in sql server has foreign key references then you can't truncate. instead in your execute sql task use delete without a where clause.
delete from person_table
If you are really adamant about truncating the table, you could drop the foreign key constraints, then truncate the table then recreate the foreign key constraints. Providing of course, that the user you are running the package as has the privileges to do so.
Create an "Execute SQl" task and run DELETE FROM person
after this task, run your import.
DELETE FROM will give the same result as TRUNCATE TABLE, but if the table has a foreign key pointing to it, it cant be truncated. You have to use the delete command
You won't be able to delete either unless cascading deletes is turned on (or you delete the child records first). Why is this a problem you ask, why can't I do what I want to do? Because if you do then you may lose the integrity of the data. Suppose I have records in table2 which relate to records in table 1. Suppose further that table1 has an autogenerated id. If I could truncate that table, then I leave those records i ntable 2 hanging out without any record to reference them, they have become orphaned. Well but I'm putting the data back in you say. But then they will have new id numbers and you will still lose the relatinoship tothe related data.
Can you drop the FK and truncate and insert and recreate the FK. Yes you can but it is a poor practice and you should not unless you are also recreating those related records.
The best practice is to use a MERGE statement to update or insert depending on what you need.
In SSIS Transfer SQL Server Objects Task Set Property DeleteFirst to TRUE

Why 'delete from table' takes a long time when 'truncate table' takes 0 time?

(I've tried this in MySql)
I believe they're semantically equivalent. Why not identify this trivial case and speed it up?
truncate table cannot be rolled back, it is like dropping and recreating the table.
...just to add some detail.
Calling the DELETE statement tells the database engine to generate a transaction log of all the records deleted. In the event the delete was done in error, you can restore your records.
Calling the TRUNCATE statement is a blanket "all or nothing" that removes all the records with no transaction log to restore from. It is definitely faster, but should only be done when you're sure you don't need any of the records you're going to remove.
Delete from table deletes each row from the one at a time and adds a record into the transaction log so that the operation can be rolled back. The time taken to delete is also proportional to the number of indexes on the table, and if there are any foreign key constraints (for innodb).
Truncate effectively drops the table and recreates it and can not be performed within a transaction. It therefore required fewer operations and executes quickly. Truncate also does not make use of any on delete triggers.
Exact details about why this is quicker in MySql can be found in the MySql documentation:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/truncate-table.html
Your question was about MySQL and I know little to nothing about MySQL as a product but I thought I'd add that in SQL Server a TRUNCATE statement can be rolled back. Try it for yourself
create table test1 (col1 int)
go
insert test1 values(3)
begin tran
truncate table test1
select * from test1
rollback tran
select * from test1
In SQL Server TRUNCATE is logged, it's just not logged in such a verbose way as DELETE is logged. I believe it's referred to as a minimally logged operation. Effectively the data pages still contain the data but their extents have been marked for deletion. As long as the data pages still exist you can roll back the truncate. Hope this is helpful. I'd be interested to know the results if somebody tries it on MySQL.
For MySql 5 using InnoDb as the storage engine, TRUNCATE acts just like DELETE without a WHERE clause: i.e. for large tables it takes ages because it deletes rows one-by-one. This is changing in version 6.x.
see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/truncate-table.html
for 5.1 info (row-by-row with InnoDB) and
http://blogs.mysql.com/peterg/category/personal-opinion/
for changes in 6.x
Editor's note
This answer is clearly contradicted by the MySQL documentation:
"For an InnoDB table before version 5.0.3, InnoDB processes TRUNCATE TABLE by deleting rows one by one. As of MySQL 5.0.3, row by row deletion is used only if there are any FOREIGN KEY constraints that reference the table. If there are no FOREIGN KEY constraints, InnoDB performs fast truncation by dropping the original table and creating an empty one with the same definition, which is much faster than deleting rows one by one."
Truncate is on a table level, while Delete is on a row level. If you would translate this to sql in an other syntax, truncate would be:
DELETE * FROM table
thus deleting all rows at once, while DELETE statement (in PHPMyAdmin) goes like:
DELETE * FROM table WHERE id = 1
DELETE * FROM table WHERE id = 2
Just until the table is empty. Each query taking a number of (milli)seconds which add up to taking longer than a truncate.

Difference between drop table and truncate table?

I have some tables that I build as a part of my report rollup. I don't need them afterwards at all. Someone mentioned to truncate them as it would be faster.
Deleting records from a table logs every deletion and executes delete triggers for the records deleted. Truncate is a more powerful command that empties a table without logging each row. SQL Server prevents you from truncating a table with foreign keys referencing it, because of the need to check the foreign keys on each row.
Truncate is normally ultra-fast, ideal for cleaning out data from a temporary table. It does preserve the structure of the table for future use.
If you actually want to remove the table definitions as well as the data, simply drop the tables.
See this MSDN article for more info
DROP TABLE deletes the table.
TRUNCATE TABLE empties it, but leaves its structure for future data.
DROP and TRUNC do different things:
TRUNCATE TABLE
Removes all rows from a table without
logging the individual row deletions.
TRUNCATE TABLE is similar to the
DELETE statement with no WHERE clause;
however, TRUNCATE TABLE is faster and
uses fewer system and transaction log
resources.
DROP TABLE
Removes one or more table definitions
and all data, indexes, triggers,
constraints, and permission
specifications for those tables.
As far as speed is concerned the difference should be small. And anyway if you don't need the table structure at all, certainly use DROP.
I think you means the difference between DELETE TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE.
DROP TABLE
remove the table from the database.
DELETE TABLE
without a condition delete all rows. If there are trigger and references then this will process for every row. Also a index will be modify if there one.
TRUNCATE TABLE
set the row count zero and without logging each row. That it is many faster as the other both.
None of these answer point out an important difference about these two operations. Drop table is an operation that can be rolled back. However, truncate cannot be rolled back ['TRUNCATE TABLE' can be rolled back as well]. In this way dropping a very large table can be very expensive if there are many rows, because they all have to be recorded in a temporary space in case you decide to roll it back.
Usually, if I want to get rid of a large table, I will truncate it, then drop it. This way the data will be nixed without record, and the table can be dropped, and that drop will be very inexpensive because no data needs to be recorded.
It is important to point out though that truncate just deletes data, leaving the table, while drop will, in fact, delete the data and the table itself. (assuming foreign keys don't preclude such an action)
DROP Table
DROP TABLE [table_name];
The DROP command is used to remove a table from the database. It is a DDL command. All the rows, indexes and privileges of the table will also be removed. DROP operation cannot be rolled back.
DELETE Table
DELETE FROM [table_name]
WHERE [condition];
DELETE FROM [table_name];
The DELETE command is a DML command. It can be used to delete all the rows or some rows from the table based on the condition specified in WHERE clause. It is executed using a row lock, each row in the table is locked for deletion. It maintain the transaction log, so it is slower than TRUNCATE.
DELETE operations can be rolled back.
TRUNCATE Table
TRUNCATE TABLE [table_name];
The TRUNCATE command removes all rows from a table. It won't log the deletion of each row, instead it logs the deallocation of the data pages of the table, which makes it faster than DELETE. It is executed using a table lock and whole table is locked for remove all records. It is a DDL command. TRUNCATE operations cannot be rolled back.
TRUNCATE TABLE keeps all of your old indexing and whatnot. DROP TABLE would, obviously, get rid of the table and require you to recreate it later.
Drop gets rid of the table completely, removing the definition as well. Truncate empties the table but does not get rid of the definition.
Truncating the table empties the table. Dropping the table deletes it entirely. Either one will be fast, but dropping it will likely be faster (depending on your database engine).
If you don't need it anymore, drop it so it's not cluttering up your schema.
DELETE TableA instead of TRUNCATE TableA?
A common misconception is that they do the same thing. Not
so. In fact, there are many differences between the two.
DELETE is a logged operation on a per row basis. This means
that the deletion of each row gets logged and physically deleted.
You can DELETE any row that will not violate a constraint, while leaving the foreign key or any other contraint in place.
TRUNCATE is also a logged operation, but in a different way.
TRUNCATE logs the deallocation of the data pages in which the data
exists. The deallocation of data pages means that your data
rows still actually exist in the data pages, but the
extents have been marked as empty for reuse. This is what
makes TRUNCATE a faster operation to perform over DELETE.
You cannot TRUNCATE a table that has any foreign key
constraints. You will have to remove the contraints, TRUNCATE the
table, and reapply the contraints.
TRUNCATE will reset any identity columns to the default seed
value.
truncate removes all the rows, but not the table itself, it is essentially equivalent to deleting with no where clause, but usually faster.
I have a correction for one of the statements above... "truncate cannot be rolled back"
Truncate can be rolled back. There are some cases when you can't do a truncate or drop table, such as when you have a foreign key reference. For a task such as monthly reporting, I'd probably just drop the table once I didn't need it anymore. If I was doing this rollup reporting more often then I'd probably keep the table instead and use truncate.
Hope this helps, here's some more info that you should find useful...
Please see the following article for more details:
http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2007/06/13/1458.aspx
Also, for more details on delete vs. truncate, see this article:
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/faq/delete_truncate_difference_p1.aspx
Thanks!
Jeff
TRUNCATE TABLE is functionally
identical to DELETE statement with no
WHERE clause: both remove all rows in
the table. But TRUNCATE TABLE is
faster and uses fewer system and
transaction log resources than DELETE.
The DELETE statement removes rows one
at a time and records an entry in the
transaction log for each deleted row.
TRUNCATE TABLE removes the data by
deallocating the data pages used to
store the table's data, and only the
page deallocations are recorded in the
transaction log.
TRUNCATE TABLE removes all rows from a
table, but the table structure and its
columns, constraints, indexes and so
on remain. The counter used by an
identity for new rows is reset to the
seed for the column. If you want to
retain the identity counter, use
DELETE instead. If you want to remove
table definition and its data, use the
DROP TABLE statement.
You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on a
table referenced by a FOREIGN KEY
constraint; instead, use DELETE
statement without a WHERE clause.
Because TRUNCATE TABLE is not logged,
it cannot activate a trigger.
TRUNCATE TABLE may not be used on
tables participating in an indexed
view.
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260621(SQL.80).aspx
In the SQL standard, DROP table removes the table and the table schema - TRUNCATE removes all rows.
The answers here match up to the question, but I'm going to answer the question you didn't ask. "Should I use truncate or delete?" If you are removing all rows from a table, you'll typically want to truncate, since it's much much faster. Why is it much faster? At least in the case of Oracle, it resets the high water mark. This is basically a dereferencing of the data and allows the db to reuse it for something else.
DELETE VS TRUNCATE
The DELETE statement removes rows one at a time and records an entry in the transaction
log for each deleted row. TRUNCATE TABLE removes the data by deallocating the data
pages used to store the table data and records only the page deallocations in the
transaction log
We can use WHERE clause in DELETE but in TRUNCATE you cannot use it
When the DELETE statement is executed using a row lock, each row in the table is locked
for deletion. TRUNCATE TABLE always locks the table and page but not each row
After a DELETE statement is executed, the table can still contain empty pages.If the
delete operation does not use a table lock, the table (heap) will contain many empty
pages. For indexes, the delete operation can leave empty pages behind, although these
pages will be deallocated quickly by a background cleanup process
TRUNCATE TABLE removes all rows from a table, but the table structure and its columns,
constraints, indexes, and so on remain
DELETE statement doesn't RESEED identity column but TRUNCATE statement RESEEDS the
IDENTITY column
You cannot use TRUNCATE TABLE on tables that:
Are referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint. (You can truncate a table that has a
foreign key that references itself.)
Participate in an indexed view.
Are published by using transactional replication or merge replication
TRUNCATE TABLE cannot activate a trigger because the operation does not log individual
row deletions
Drop
drop whole table and all its structure
truncate
delete all rows from table
it is different from delete that it also delete indexes of rows
Delete Statement
Delete Statement delete table rows and return the number of rows is deleted from the table.in this statement, we use where clause to deleted data from the table
Delete Statement is slower than Truncate statement because it deleted records one by one
Truncate Statement
Truncate statement Deleted or removing all the rows from the table.
It is faster than the Delete Statement because it deleted all the records from the table
Truncate statement not return the no of rows are deleted from the table
Drop statement
Drop statement deleted all records as well as the structure of the table
DELETE
The DELETE command is used to remove rows from a table. A WHERE clause can be used to only remove some rows. If no WHERE condition is specified, all rows will be removed. After performing a DELETE operation you need to
COMMIT or ROLLBACK the transaction to make the change permanent or to undo it.
TRUNCATE
TRUNCATE removes all rows from a table. The operation cannot be rolled back ... As such, TRUCATE is faster and doesn't use as much undo space as a DELETE.
From: http://www.orafaq.com/faq/difference_between_truncate_delete_and_drop_commands