Sams Teach Yourself MySQL

The DELETE Statement

The DELETE statement is used to remove data rows from a table. Its syntax is similar to a SELECT statement: You supply a table name after the keyword FROM and use a WHERE clause to filter the rows that are to be deleted.

Deleting

Without a WHERE clause, DELETE deletes every rows from the given table. Unless this is the result you want, always make sure that you include a WHERE clause in a DELETE statement.

To delete only a single row from a table, you should ensure that the WHERE clause will match only that row. Usually, you should check the value of the table’s PRIMARY KEY column to ensure that an exact match is found.