Question

This is the case.
There are 3 tables – state, region and city. If I delete a state with the name “France”, I want that all regions and cities belonging to this state be deleted as well. How to do this in T-SQL?

Answer 1

I’m assuming you haven’t set up cascading deletes, so you’ve got to work your way from the bottom up: delete cities first, then regions, then state.

delete from c
    from city c
        inner join region r
            on c.region_id = r.region_id
        inner join state s
            on r.state_id = s.state_id
    where s.state = 'France'

delete from r
    from region r
        inner join state s
            on r.state_id = s.state_id
    where s.state = 'France'

delete from s
    from state s
    where s.state = 'France'