Question

I have a Postgresql database on which I want to do a few cascading deletes. However, the tables aren’t set up with the ON DELETE CASCADE rule. Is there any way I can perform a delete and tell Postgresql to cascade it just this once? Something equivalent to

DELETE FROM some_table CASCADE; 

The answers to this older question make it seem like no such solution exists, but I figured I’d ask this question explicitly just to be sure.

Answer 1

No. To do it just once you would simply write the delete statement for the table you want to cascade.

DELETE FROM some_child_table WHERE some_fk_field IN (SELECT some_id FROM some_Table); DELETE FROM some_table;