Re: Efficient DELETE Strategies

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 10:28:40 -0400, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.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.

ServusManfred