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Databases & SQL vocabulary · SQL Statements and Queries

Truncate

Meaning in databases & SQL, with examples

/ˈtrʌŋkeɪt/verbCommon term

In databases & SQL, truncate means: To remove all rows from a table at once with TRUNCATE TABLE, keeping the table and its structure; it is much faster than deleting rows one by one.

In Turkish: tabloyu boşaltmak, truncate etmek

How it is used

TRUNCATE takes no WHERE clause and usually does not fire DELETE triggers. In MySQL and Oracle it commits immediately and cannot be rolled back; in PostgreSQL and SQL Server it can be rolled back inside a transaction. It often resets identity counters too.

Example sentences

  1. Truncate the staging table before each import so old rows don't get mixed in.

  2. Someone truncated the wrong table, and we had to restore it from last night's backup.

Common collocations

  • truncate a table
  • TRUNCATE TABLE
  • truncate vs delete
  • truncate and reload
  • DELETE statementThe SQL statement that removes rows from a table. With a WHERE clause it removes only matching rows; without one it removes every row.
  • DDLData definition language: the SQL statements that create, change and remove database objects, such as CREATE, ALTER and DROP.
  • tableA structure in a relational database that stores data about one kind of thing in rows and columns, for example all customers or all orders.
  • backupA copy of a database saved at a certain moment so that the data can be brought back after a failure, a mistake or an attack.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: SQL Statements and Queries

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