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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T23:12:28+00:00

I have the following tables: Entry EntryID – int EntryDate – datetime Hour EntryID

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I have the following tables:

Entry
EntryID – int
EntryDate – datetime

Hour
EntryID – int
InHour – datetime
OutHour – datetime

For each registry in the Entry table, there should be at least one (could be many) registries on the Hour table, like so:

Entry
EntryID: 8
EntryDate: 9/9/2010 12:31:25

Hour
EntryID: 8
InHour: 9/9/2010 12:31:25
OutHour: 9/9/2010 18:21:19

Now, this information is stored on 2 equal databases, one on local machine and one on a server. I’m trying to write a query that will delete all the information that has already been passed to the server under the condition that the registries that do not have an OutHour (null) will not be deleted.

I wrote the following query:

DELETE from [dbo].[Entry]
 WHERE [dbo].[Entry].[EntryID] IN (SELECT [EntryID] 
                                     FROM [LINKEDSERVER].[MYDATABASE].[dbo].[Entry]) 
  AND [dbo].[Entry].[EntryID] IN (SELECT [EntryID] 
                                    FROM [dbo].[Hour] 
                                   WHERE [OutHour] IS NOT NULL)

DELETE from [dbo].[Hour]
 WHERE [dbo].[Hour].[InHour] IN (SELECT [InHour] 
                                   FROM [LINKEDSERVER].[MYDATABASE].[dbo].[Hour]) 
   AND [dbo].[Hour].[OutHour] IS NOT NULL

AFAIK, this query first checks in the Entry table and will delete any registries that are already on the server and do not have a corresponding Hour registry that has a null OutHour. However today I found out that an Entry record was deleted but the corresponding Hour wasn’t (it had a null OutHour).

What am I doing wrong? Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    My very first suggestion is to put a foreign key relationship between the two on EntryID. This will prevent any deletions from the Entry table without first removing all instances from the Hour table.

    Secondly, with a foreign key in place you have to do it from the child to the parent (aka, start at the bottom of the hierarchy). This means i would do this first:

    delete from dbo.Hour where OutHour is not null
delete e
from dbo.Entry e
left outer join dbo.Hour h
on e.entryid=h.entryid
where h.entryid is null
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