Question

In MySQL you can use the syntax

DELETE t1,t2 
FROM table1 AS t1 
INNER JOIN table2 t2 ...
INNER JOIN table3 t3 ...

How do I do the same thing in SQL Server?

Answer 1

You can take advantage of the “deleted” pseudo table in this example. Something like:

begin transaction;

   declare @deletedIds table ( id int );

   delete from t1
   output deleted.id into @deletedIds
   from table1 as t1
    inner join table2 as t2
      on t2.id = t1.id
    inner join table3 as t3
      on t3.id = t2.id;

   delete from t2
   from table2 as t2
    inner join @deletedIds as d
      on d.id = t2.id;

   delete from t3
   from table3 as t3 ...

commit transaction;

Obviously you can do an ‘output deleted.’ on the second delete as well, if you needed something to join on for the third table.

As a side note, you can also do inserted.* on an insert statement, and both inserted.* and deleted.* on an update statement.

EDIT:
Also, have you considered adding a trigger on table1 to delete from table2 + 3? You’ll be inside of an implicit transaction, and will also have the “inserted.” and “deleted.” pseudo-tables available.