Question

I need to pass an array of “id’s” to a stored procedure, to delete all rows from the table EXCEPT the rows that match id’s in the array.

How can I do it in a most simple way?

Answer 1

Use a stored procedure:

EDIT:
A complement for serialize List (or anything else):

List<string> testList = new List<int>();

testList.Add(1);
testList.Add(2);
testList.Add(3);

XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<int>));
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
xs.Serialize(ms, testList);

string resultXML = UTF8Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray());

The result (ready to use with XML parameter):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ArrayOfInt xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <int>1</int>
  <int>2</int>
  <int>3</int>
</ArrayOfInt>

---

ORIGINAL POST:

Passing XML as parameter:

<ids>
    <id>1</id>
    <id>2</id>
</ids>

---

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[DeleteAllData]
(
    @XMLDoc XML
)
AS
BEGIN

DECLARE @handle INT

EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument @handle OUTPUT, @XMLDoc

DELETE FROM
    YOURTABLE
WHERE
    YOUR_ID_COLUMN NOT IN (
        SELECT * FROM OPENXML (@handle, '/ids/id') WITH (id INT '.') 
    )
EXEC sp_xml_removedocument @handle

---