Re: Efficient DELETE Strategies

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 10:28:40 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
wrote:
>It would seem that
>
> DELETE [ FROM ] relation_expr [ alias_clause ]
> [ FROM from_list ] where_clause
>
>is the syntax that would be most nearly compatible with MSSQL and MySQL.
>Does Oracle have anything comparable?

Oracle basically supports (with slight variations between releases
7/8/9):
DELETE [FROM] { table
| view
| ( subquery )
}
[alias] [WHERE ...] [returning_clause]

Informix (March 1997, 9.1?):
DELETE FROM { table
| ONLY ( table )
| view
| synonym
| collection_derived_table
}
WHERE condition

According to the "SQL Quick Syntax Guide" the WHERE clause is not
optional. Does anybody know, if this is a documentation bug?
"Guide to SQL, Syntax" (Feb 1998, v7.3, v8.2) says, the WHERE clause
is optional, as we'd expect.

Servus
Manfred