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DELETE and UPDATE FROM

SQL Server Usage

SQL Server supports an extension to the ANSI standard that allows using an additional FROM clause in UPDATE and DELETE statements.

You can use this additional FROM clause to limit the number of modified rows by joining the table being updated, or deleted from, to one or more other tables. This functionality is similar to using a WHERE clause with a derived table subquery. For UPDATE, you can use this syntax to set multiple column values simultaneously without repeating the subquery for every column.

However, these statements can introduce logical inconsistencies if a row in an updated table is matched to more than one row in a joined table. The current implementation chooses an arbitrary value from the set of potential values and is non deterministic.

Syntax

UPDATE <Table Name>
SET <Column Name> = <Expression> ,...
FROM <Table Source>
WHERE <Filter Predicate>;

DELETE FROM <Table Name>
FROM <Table Source>
WHERE <Filter Predicate>;

Examples

Delete customers with no orders.

CREATE TABLE Customers
(
    Customer VARCHAR(20) PRIMARY KEY
);

INSERT INTO Customers
VALUES
('John'),
('Jim'),
('Jack')

CREATE TABLE Orders
(
    OrderID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    Customer VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
    OrderDate DATE NOT NULL
);

INSERT INTO Orders (OrderID, Customer, OrderDate)
VALUES
(1, 'Jim', '20180401'),
(2, 'Jack', '20180402');

DELETE FROM Customers
FROM Customers AS C
    LEFT OUTER JOIN
    Orders AS O
    ON O.Customer = C.Customer
WHERE O.OrderID IS NULL;

SELECT *
FROM Customers;

For the preceding examples, the result looks as shown following.

Customer

Jim
Jack

Update multiple columns in Orders based on the values in OrderCorrections.

CREATE TABLE OrderCorrections
(
    OrderID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    Customer VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
    OrderDate DATE NOT NULL
);

INSERT INTO OrderCorrections
VALUES (1, 'Jack', '20180324');

UPDATE O
SET Customer = OC.Customer,
    OrderDate = OC.OrderDate
FROM Orders AS O
    INNER JOIN
    OrderCorrections AS OC
    ON O.OrderID = OD.OrderID;

SELECT *
FROM Orders;

For the preceding example, the result looks as shown following.

Customer  OrderDate
Jack      2018-03-24
Jack      2018-04-02

For more information, see UPDATE (Transact-SQL), DELETE (Transact-SQL), and FROM clause plus JOIN, APPLY, PIVOT (Transact-SQL) in the SQL Server documentation.

MySQL Usage

Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition (Aurora MySQL) doesn’t support DELETE and UPDATE FROM syntax.

Migration Considerations

You can easily rewrite the DELETE and UPDATE FROM statements as subqueries.

For DELETE, place the subqueries in the WHERE clause.

For UPDATE, place the subqueries either in the WHERE or SET clause.

For DELETE statements, the workaround is simple and, in most cases, easier to read and understand.

For UPDATE statements, the workaround involves repeating the correlated subquery for each column being set.

Although this approach makes the code longer and harder to read, it does solve the logical challenges associated with updates having multiple matched rows in the joined tables.

In the current implementation, the SQL Server engine silently chooses an arbitrary value if more than one value exists for the same row.

When you rewrite the statement to use a correlated subquery, such as in the following example, if more than one value is returned from the sub query, a SQL error will be raised: SQL Error [1242] [21000]: Subquery returns more than 1 row.

Consult the documentation for the Aurora MySQL UPDATE statement as there are significant processing differences from SQL Server. For example:

For example, in the statement UPDATE Table SET Col1 = Col1 + 1, Col2 = Col1, Col2 is set to the new value of Col1. The end result is Col1 = Col2.

Examples

Delete customers with no orders.

CREATE TABLE Customers
(
    Customer VARCHAR(20) PRIMARY KEY
);

INSERT INTO Customers
VALUES
('John'),
('Jim'),
('Jack')

CREATE TABLE Orders
(
    OrderID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    Customer VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
    OrderDate DATE NOT NULL
);

INSERT INTO Orders (OrderID, Customer, OrderDate)
VALUES
(1, 'Jim', '20180401'),
(2, 'Jack', '20180402');

DELETE FROM Customers
WHERE Customer NOT IN (
    SELECT Customer
    FROM Orders
);

SELECT *
FROM Customers;

For the preceding example, the result looks as shown following.

Customer

Jim
Jack

Update multiple columns in Orders based on the values in OrderCorrections.

CREATE TABLE OrderCorrections
(
    OrderID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    Customer VARCHAR(20) NOT NULL,
    OrderDate DATE NOT NULL
);

INSERT INTO OrderCorrections
VALUES (1, 'Jack', '20180324');

UPDATE Orders
SET Customer = (
    SELECT Customer
    FROM OrderCorrections AS OC
    WHERE Orders.OrderID = OC.OrderID
),
OrderDate = (
    SELECT OrderDate
    FROM OrderCorrections AS OC
    WHERE Orders.OrderID = OC.OrderID
IN (
    SELECT OrderID
    FROM OrderCorrections
);

SELECT *
FROM Orders;

For the preceding example, the result looks as shown following.

Customer  OrderDate
Jack      2018-03-24
Jack      2018-04-02

Summary

The following table identifies similarities, differences, and key migration considerations.

For more information, see UPDATE Statement and DELETE Statement in the MySQL documentation.