DELETE

Delete rows from a table.

note

Dremio supports reading positional deletes and equality deletes for Apache Iceberg v2 tables. Dremio does not support reading global equality deletes from Apache Iceberg v2 tables in which the partition spec for the delete file is unpartitioned. Dremio performs writes using copy-on-write by default and supports writes using merge-on-read if specified in the Iceberg table properties.

Syntax

DELETE FROM <table_name>
  [ AT { REF[ERENCE] | BRANCH } <reference_name> ]
  [ AS <alias> ]
  [ USING <additional_table_or_query>
  [ WHERE <where_conditions> ]

Parameters

<table_name> String

The name of the table with data that you want to delete.

---

AT { REF[ERENCE] | BRANCH } <reference_name> String   Optional

Specifies the reference at which you want the table to be deleted from. When this parameter is omitted, the current branch is used.

REF: Identifies the specific reference.

BRANCH: Identifies the specific branch.

note

If you specify the reference for the target table, you must also specify the reference for the source table.

---

AS <alias> String   Optional

The alias of the table.

---

<additional_table_or_subquery>String   Optional

If you need to refer to additional tables or subqueries in the WHERE clause to help identify the rows to be removed, then specify those table names in the USING clause. Enclose subqueries in parentheses.

---

WHERE <where_conditions> String   Optional

The filter for specifying which rows of the table to delete.

Examples

Example of a DELETE command with a join between a target table (orders) and a source table (returns)

DELETE FROM orders
  USING returns
  WHERE orders.order_id = returns.order_id;

Equivalent DELETE command using a correlated subquery

DELETE FROM orders
  WHERE EXISTS (select 1 from returns where order_id = orders.order_id)