Delete From Table1 a,Table2 b where a.id=b.id
Or
DELETE FROM Table1
WHERE Table1.id IN (SELECT Table2.id FROM Table2)
Or
DELETE Table1
FROM Table1 t1 INNER JOIN Table2 t2 ON t1.ID = t2.ID;
This is old I know, but just a pointer to anyone using this ass a reference. I have just tried this and if you are using Oracle, JOIN does not work in DELETE statements.
You get a the following message:
Oftentimes, one wants to delete some records from a table based on criteria in another table. How do you delete from one of those tables without removing the records in both table?
DELETE DeletingFromTable
FROM DeletingFromTable INNER JOIN CriteriaTable
ON DeletingFromTable.field_id = CriteriaTable.id
WHERE CriteriaTable.criteria = "value";
The key is that you specify the name of the table to be deleted from as the SELECT. So, the JOIN and WHERE do the selection and limiting, while the DELETE does the deleting. You're not limited to just one table, though. If you have a many-to-many relationship (for instance, Magazines and Subscribers, joined by a Subscription) and you're removing a Subscriber, you need to remove any potential records from the join model as well.
DELETE subscribers, subscriptions
FROM subscribers INNER JOIN subscriptions
ON subscribers.id = subscriptions.subscriber_id
INNER JOIN magazines
ON subscriptions.magazine_id = magazines.id
WHERE subscribers.name='Wes';
Deleting records with a join could also be done with a LEFT JOIN and a WHERE to see if the joined table was NULL, so that you could remove records in one table that didn't have a match (like in preparation for adding a relationship.) Example post to come.
Since the OP does not ask for a specific DB, better use a standard compliant statement.
Only MERGE is in SQL standard for deleting (or updating) rows while joining something on target table.
merge table1 t1
using (
select t2.ID
from table2 t2
) as d
on t1.ID = d.ID
when matched then delete;
MERGE has a stricter semantic, protecting from some error cases which may go unnoticed with DELETE ... FROM. It enforces 'uniqueness' of match : if many rows in the source (the statement inside using) match the same row in the target, the merge must be canceled and an error must be raised by the SQL engine.
While the OP doesn't want to use an 'in' statement, in reply to Ankur Gupta, this was the easiest way I found to delete the records in one table which didn't exist in another table, in a one to many relationship:
DELETE
FROM Table1 as t1
WHERE ID_Number NOT IN
(SELECT ID_Number FROM Table2 as t2)
I often do things like the following made-up example. (This example is from Informix SE running on Linux.)
The point of of this example is to delete all real estate exemption/abatement transaction records -- because the abatement application has a bug -- based on information in the real_estate table.
In this case last_update != nullmeans the account is not closed, and res_exempt != 'p' means the accounts are not personal property (commercial equipment/furnishings).
delete from trans
where yr = '16'
and tran_date = '01/22/2016'
and acct_type = 'r'
and tran_type = 'a'
and bill_no in
(select acct_no from real_estate where last_update is not null
and res_exempt != 'p');
I like this method, because the filtering criteria -- at least for me -- is easier to read while creating the query, and to understand many months from now when I'm looking at it and wondering what I was thinking.