Question

I’m using Linq to SQL to access my database. I want to have a ‘delete account’ feature which basically gets rid of all records in all tables that belong to a given user. What would be the most efficient way of doing this?

The deletion has to occur in a certain order, otherwise there are foreign key integrity errors. I can do this manually from the database, and my guess would be to simply emulate that in L2S e.g. (pseudo code)

var tb1del = From Table1 Where userId == userIdToDelete;
mydatacontext.Table1.deleteonsubmit(tb1del);

var tb1de2 = From Table1 Where userId == userIdToDelete;
mydatacontext.Table2.deleteonsubmit(tb1de2);
...

However, I’m sure that’s not the most efficient way of deleting the records.

Answer 1

The simplest solution is just to create a FOREIGN KEY constraint with ON DELETE CASCADE in the database. That way you don’t need to worry about the deletion order, or anything else. Just delete the account record and you’re done.