DELETE FROM Table WHERE ID NOT IN (SELECT TOP 10 ID FROM Table)
Edit:
Chris brings up a good performance hit since the TOP 10 query would be run for each row. If this is a one time thing, then it may not be as big of a deal, but if it is a common thing, then I did look closer at it.
I would select ID column(s) the set of rows that you want to keep into a temp table or table variable. Then delete all the rows that do not exist in the temp table. The syntax mentioned by another user:
DELETE FROM Table WHERE ID NOT IN (SELECT TOP 10 ID FROM Table)
Has a potential problem. The "SELECT TOP 10" query will be executed for each row in the table, which could be a huge performance hit. You want to avoid making the same query over and over again.
This syntax should work, based what you listed as your original SQL statement:
create table #nuke(NukeID int)
insert into #nuke(Nuke) select top 1000 id from article
delete article where not exists (select 1 from nuke where Nukeid = id)
drop table #nuke
Better way would be to insert the rows you DO want into another table, drop the original table and then rename the new table so it has the same name as the old table
I think using a virtual table would be much better than an IN-clause or temp table.
DELETE
Product
FROM
Product
LEFT OUTER JOIN
(
SELECT TOP 10
Product.id
FROM
Product
) TopProducts ON Product.id = TopProducts.id
WHERE
TopProducts.id IS NULL
Here is how I did it. This method is faster and simpler:
Delete all but top n from database table in MS SQL using OFFSET command
WITH CTE AS
(
SELECT ID
FROM dbo.TableName
ORDER BY ID DESC
OFFSET 11 ROWS
)
DELETE CTE;
Replace ID with column by which you want to sort.
Replace number after OFFSET with number of rows which you want to keep.
Choose DESC or ASC - whatever suits your case.
I've got a trick to avoid executing the TOP expression for every row. We can combine TOP with MAX to get the MaxId we want to keep. Then we just delete everything greater than MaxId.
-- Declare Variable to hold the highest id we want to keep.
DECLARE @MaxId as int = (
SELECT MAX(temp.ID)
FROM (SELECT TOP 10 ID FROM table ORDER BY ID ASC) temp
)
-- Delete anything greater than MaxId. If MaxId is null, there is nothing to delete.
IF @MaxId IS NOT NULL
DELETE FROM table WHERE ID > @MaxId
Note: It is important to use ORDER BY when declaring MaxId to ensure proper results are queried.