Difference between TRUNCATE, DELETE and DROP commands

Submitted by admin on Sat, 2006-02-11 02:07
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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. Note that this operation will cause all DELETE triggers on the table to fire.

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM emp;

  COUNT(*)
----------
        14

SQL> DELETE FROM emp WHERE job = 'CLERK';

4 rows deleted.

SQL> COMMIT;

Commit complete.

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM emp;

  COUNT(*)
----------
        10

TRUNCATE

TRUNCATE removes all rows from a table. The operation cannot be rolled back and no triggers will be fired. As such, TRUCATE is faster and doesn't use as much undo space as a DELETE.

SQL> TRUNCATE TABLE emp;

Table truncated.

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM emp;

  COUNT(*)
----------
         0

DROP

The DROP command removes a table from the database. All the tables' rows, indexes and privileges will also be removed. No DML triggers will be fired. The operation cannot be rolled back. 

SQL> DROP TABLE emp;

Table dropped.

SQL> SELECT * FROM emp;
SELECT * FROM emp
              *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00942: table or view does not exist

DROP and TRUNCATE are DDL commands, whereas DELETE is a DML command. Therefore DELETE operations can be rolled back (undone), while DROP and TRUNCATE operations cannot be rolled back.

From Oracle 10g a table can be "undropped". Example:

SQL> FLASHBACK TABLE emp TO BEFORE DROP;

Flashback complete.

PS: DROP and TRUNCATE are DDL commands, whereas DELETE is a DML command. As such, DELETE operations can be rolled back (undone), while DROP and TRUNCATE operations cannot be rolled back.

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Comments

Submitted by Dipal havsar (not verified) on Tue, 2006-09-19 08:39.

1>TRUNCATE is a DDL command whereas DELETE is a DML command.

2>TRUNCATE is much faster than DELETE.

Reason:When you type DELETE.all the data get copied into the Rollback Tablespace first.then delete operation get performed.Thatswhy when you type ROLLBACK after deleting a table ,you can get back the data(The system get it for you from the Rollback Tablespace).All this process take time.But when you type TRUNCATE,it removes data directly without copying it into the Rollback Tablespace.Thatswhy TRUNCATE is faster.Once you Truncate you cann't get back the data.

3>You cann't rollback in TRUNCATE but in DELETE you can rollback.TRUNCATE removes the record permanently.

4>In case of TRUNCATE ,Trigger doesn't get fired.But in DML commands like DELETE .Trigger get fired.

5>You cann't use conditions(WHERE clause) in TRUNCATE.But in DELETE you can write conditions using WHERE clause

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Submitted by Shreehari (not verified) on Tue, 2006-11-07 21:25.

Thanks for this information.
There is one more difference that TRUNCATE command resets the High Water Mark for the table but DELETE does not. So after TRUNCATE the operations on table are much faster.

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Submitted by rajakumari (not verified) on Sat, 2006-11-18 08:34.

Drop command will delete the entire row also the structure.But truncate will delete the contenets only not the strucure, so no need to give specifications for another table creation.

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Submitted by shoaib on Thu, 2007-01-18 00:04.

DELETE
Delete is the command that only remove the data from the table. It is DML statement. Deleted data can be rollback. By using this we can delete whole data from the table(if use without where clause).If ew want to remove only selected data then we should specify condition in the where clause
SQL>delete from employee;(this command will remove all the data from table)
SQL>delete from employee where employee_name='JOHN';(This command will remove only that row from employee table where employee_name is JOHN');

DROP:
Drop command remove the table from data dictionary. This is the DDL statement. We can not recover the table before Oracle 10g. But Oracle 10g provide the command to recover it by using the command (FLASHBACK)

TRUNCATE:
This is the DML command. This command delete the data from table. But there is one difference from ordinary delete command. Truncate command drop the storage held by this table. Drop storage can be use by this table again or some other table. This is the faster command because it directly drop the storage

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Submitted by srora on Wed, 2007-06-20 04:23.

DML commands have a roll back option.But DDL commands do not have.So truncate is a ddl statement

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Submitted by jyotiranjan85 on Fri, 2012-01-06 01:05.

Yes, DML command can be roll back but DDL can not.

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Submitted by Sandip Mitra (not verified) on Fri, 2007-01-19 01:36.

DROP command is a DDL command. It removes the information along with structure. It also removes all information about the table from data dictionary.

TRUNCATE command is DDL command. It removes all the information of the table. Regarding performance if you have to delete all the rows of a table you should perform TRUNCATE command with DROP STORAGE option.

DELETE is a DML command. It provides the facility of conditional-based deletion. It also generates REDO information.

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Submitted by huggyfee on Fri, 2010-06-04 09:38.

If you're removing a large quantity of data (e.g. debug log table) then it makes sense to use truncate to clear the table if you're not worried about needing to retrieve it as part of a transaction - remember that you are stretching your undo tablespace to cover the whole of the data you are looking to delete if you using the DELETE FROM... command, only to immediately wipe that out again when you commit - for what purpose? A lot more processing effort when all you want to do is clear a table of its contents.

On the minus side, if you have a foreign key constraint referring to the table you are trying to truncate, this won't work - even if the referring table has no data in it! This is because the foreign key checking is done with DDL rather than DML. This can be got around by temporarily disabling the foreign key constraint(s) to the table.

With dropping a table, also bear in mind that you lose any associated grants / constraints etc. and if you want to recreate the table, you would need to recreate these - and it may be that the user dropping the table may not have the rights to re-grant etc. - so dropping is always an extreme measure! If you're constantly dropping / recreating you should probably be using temporary tables for one-off jobs or global temporary tables for frequently running processes.

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Submitted by M123 on Sun, 2016-03-13 20:49.

TRUNCATE TABLE table_name;

ROLLBACK table_name;

Can be rolled back once truncated!

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Submitted by Frank Naude on Sat, 2016-06-18 02:13.

Sure, but it will do nothing! It won't roll back the TRUNCATE, as it's implicitly committed. It will only roll back what happened after the TRUNCATE, in this case, nothing.

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