Using SQL DELETE statement to delete a row

SQL DELETE statement is used to delete row (record) from the table. Usually we use WHERE clause with DELETE to specify the row which we want to delete.

+----+--------+---------+------+-----------+
| ID | FNAME  | LNAME   | AGE  | COUNTRY   |
+----+--------+---------+------+-----------+
|  1 | AKSHAY | KUMAR   |   12 | INDIA     |
|  2 | JONTY  | RHODES  |   40 | CHINA     |
|  3 | JOHNY  | DEPP    |   45 | INDIA     |
|  4 | JESSIE | PINKMAN |   25 | AUSTRALIA |
|  5 | JESSIE | JACKSON |   22 | CANADA    |
|  6 | NICOLE | KIDMAN  |   50 | USA       |
|  7 | GEORGE | CLOONEY | NULL | USA       |
+----+--------+---------+------+-----------+
7 rows in set (0.08 sec)

SQL DELETE statement syntax and example in MySql

Suppose we want to delete the row with ID 7 from the above table, use the following SQL statement -

DELETE FROM CUSTOMER WHERE ID = 7;

+----+--------+---------+------+-----------+
| ID | FNAME  | LNAME   | AGE  | COUNTRY   |
+----+--------+---------+------+-----------+
|  1 | AKSHAY | KUMAR   |   12 | INDIA     |
|  2 | JONTY  | RHODES  |   40 | CHINA     |
|  3 | JOHNY  | DEPP    |   45 | INDIA     |
|  4 | JESSIE | PINKMAN |   25 | AUSTRALIA |
|  5 | JESSIE | JACKSON |   22 | CANADA    |
|  6 | NICOLE | KIDMAN  |   50 | USA       |
+----+--------+---------+------+-----------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now we can see that row with ID 7 has been deleted.

DELETE all table rows SQL

We need to be careful while using DELETE statement , because we we don't use the WHERE clause it will delete all the rows from the table. See the statement below.

-- Warning ! below statement will delete all the rows from table CUSTOMER
DELETE FROM CUSTOMER;