Mysql – Delete from table where multiple fields match select subquery from other table

deleteMySQLselectsubquery

I want to delete an entry in a table where multiple fields match the results of another select subquery which takes data from another table.

This is what I have so far, though it doesn't work:

DELETE FROM table1
WHERE table1.id IN
   (SELECT id
   FROM table1 a JOIN table2 b
   ON a.field1 = b.field1
   AND a.field2 = b.field2
   AND a.field3 = b.field3
   AND b.id = ?
   )

Best Answer

Perhaps the DELETE JOIN would be preferable

DELETE A.* FROM table1 A INNER JOIN table2 b
ON  A.id = B.id
AND a.field1 = b.field1
AND a.field2 = b.field2
AND a.field3 = b.field3
AND b.id = ?;

I wrote about why DELETE with WHERE involving a subquery is sort of unhealthy to deal with in a past post of mine back on Feb 22, 2011: Problem with MySQL subquery

Even though there have been great strides in improving the Query Optimizer, evaluation of subqueries could make keys unavailable for key comparisons downstream.

ALTERNATIVE

Try gathering the keys you know need to be deleted and do the DELETE JOIN with it:

CREATE TABLE DeleteIDs SELECT id FROM table1 WHERE 1=2;
INSERT INTO table1
    SELECT A.id FROM table1 A INNER JOIN table2 b
    ON  A.id = B.id
    AND a.field1 = b.field1
    AND a.field2 = b.field2
    AND a.field3 = b.field3
    AND b.id = ?
;
ALTER TABLE DeleteIDs ADD PRIMARY KEY (id);
DELETE B.* FROM DeleteIDs A INNER JOIN table1 B;
DROP TABLE DeleteIDs;

SUGGESTION

Maybe an index would help

ALTER TABLE table1 ADD INDEX id123 (id,field1,field2,field3);
ALTER TABLE table2 ADD INDEX id123 (id,field1,field2,field3);

Give it a Try !!!

Related Solutions

MySQL Query: Delete from ‘table2’ where column = ‘value’ IF column in ‘table1’ = ‘value’

Your statement seems to be correct. It could also be written like this:

DELETE ii
FROM inventoryitems AS ii 
WHERE ii.itemid = 2340000
  AND EXISTS  
    ( SELECT * 
      FROM characters AS c
      WHERE c.characterid = ii.characterid
        AND EXISTS
            ( SELECT *
              FROM accounts AS a
              WHERE a.id = c.accountid 
                AND a.banned = 1
            )
    ) ;

One thing that may be causing this is if you have a character related to many accounts and one of them has banned = 1 while the other have banned = 0. I assume you want the deletion to happen (not with just one but) only if all the related accounts have banned = 1. We can modify the above code to:

DELETE ii
FROM inventoryitems AS ii 
WHERE ii.itemid = 2340000
  AND EXISTS  
    ( SELECT * 
      FROM characters AS c
      WHERE c.characterid = ii.characterid
        AND EXISTS
            ( SELECT *
              FROM accounts AS a
              WHERE a.id = c.accountid 
                AND a.banned = 1
            )
        AND NOT EXISTS
            ( SELECT *
              FROM accounts AS a
              WHERE a.id = c.accountid 
                AND a.banned = 0
            )
    ) ;

or simpler to:

DELETE ii
FROM inventoryitems AS ii 
WHERE ii.itemid = 2340000
  AND EXISTS  
    ( SELECT * 
      FROM characters AS c
        JOIN accounts AS a
          ON a.id = c.accountid
      WHERE c.characterid = ii.characterid 
      HAVING MIN(a.banned) = 1
    ) ;

After the clarifications, all the above are void. The problem was that characters table does not have characterid column but only id. So the statement used by the OP was translated/parsed as:

DELETE FROM inventoryitems
WHERE characterid IN 
    (SELECT inventoryitems.characterid         -- notice this
     from characters
     WHERE accountid IN 
        (SELECT id 
         from accounts 
         WHERE banned = '1'
        )
    ) 
  AND itemid = '2340000';

which makes the subquery uncorrelated and means "delete all rows with itemid = 2340000" if there exists at least one row (any row, not necessarily related) in the accounts with banned=1"

That's one reason why it's good to always (*) write columns with their full name as tablename.columnname or tablealias.columnname (an error would have been thrown if you had done this and problem would have been solved faster.)

(*) Unless one wants this behaviour to occur, which is a rather extreme case.

Mysql – Selecting multiple columns from multiple rows in one column (subquery?)

You need to use GROUP_CONCAT to aggregate the citizen names first. Then use CONCAT

SELECT CONCAT(id,' # ',name,' # ',citizens) listing FROM
(
    SELECT A.id,A.name,GROUP_CONCAT(B.name,' ',B.surname) citizens
    FROM city A INNER JOIN citizen B
    ON A.id = B.city_id GROUP BY A.id,A.name
) AA;

Here is the SQL Fiddle to prove it : http://sqlfiddle.com/#!2/9f4b3/1

If the names become too long due to truncation, you will have to extend GROUP_CONCAT's maximum length. To set it to 16K, run the following:

SET group_concat_max_len = 1024 * 16;
SET GLOBAL group_concat_max_len = 1024 * 16;

First line is for the session, the second is for all new DB Connections.