Unlike the insert statement, the delete statement has a where clause that can use all the methods described in Chapter 2, “The Where Clause”, to benefit directly from indexes. In fact, the delete statement works like a select that is followed by an extra step to delete the identified rows.
The actual deletion of a row is a similar process to inserting a new one—especially the removal of the references from the indexes and the activities to keep the index trees in balance. The performance chart shown in Figure 8.2 is therefore very similar to the one shown for insert.
Figure 8.2 Delete Performance by Number of Indexes
In theory, we would expect the best delete performance for a table without any indexes—as it is for insert. If there is no index, however, the database must read the full table to find the rows to be deleted. That means deleting the row would be fast but finding would be very slow. This case is therefore not shown in Figure 8.2.
Nevertheless it can make sense to execute a delete statement without an index just as it can make sense to execute a select statement without an index if it returns a large part of the table.
Tip
Even delete and update statements have an execution plan.
A delete statement without where clause is an obvious example in which the database cannot use an index, although this is a special case that has its own SQL command: truncate table. This command has the same effect as delete without where except that it deletes all rows in one shot. It is very fast but has two important side effects: (1) it does an implicit commit (exceptions: PostgreSQL and SQL Server); (2) it does not execute any triggers.
