Removing Table Data

Vertica provides several ways to remove data from a table:

Delete operation Description
Drop a table Permanently remove a table and its definition, optionally remove associated views and projections.
Delete table rows

Mark rows with delete vectors and store them so data can be rolled back to a previous epoch. The data must be purged to reclaim disk space.

Truncate table data

Remove all storage and history associated with a table. The table structure is preserved for future use.

Purge data Permanently remove historical data from physical storage and free disk space for reuse.
Drop partitions

Remove one more partitions from a table. Each partition contains a related subset of data in the table. Dropping partitioned data is efficient, and provides query performance benefits.

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