Question

Table is huge. For testing application I want to delete all, except 1000 records from table. 1000 lucky records don’t have identifier that can given as:

DELETE FROM HUGE_TABLE t WHERE t.IDENTIFIER!='LUCKY'

What is best way in one sql statement?

Answer 1

count the numberOfRecordsOnYourDB and do:

set ROWCOUNT  (numberOfRecordsOnYourDB - 1000 )
delete from hugetable
Go

This will delete records from your table but stop processing after the specified number of rows.

oh and don’t forget to set the ROWCOUNT back to a big value, or just open a new connection to do the other tasks