Question

I have a simple table where one of the field is a date column. I can select the most recent X records by doing

Select * from MyTable order by last_update desc limit X

But how do I efficiently delete those column? Is subselect the quickest?

Answer 1

If I recall correctly the IN clause accepts a sub select. Could be wrong.

DELETE FROM Person 
WHERE 
  Person.ID IN ( 
     SELECT t.ID 
     FROM 
        Person t 
     ORDER BY 
        t.joinTime DESC
     LIMIT X
   )