On 15 Feb 2005 13:19:01 -0800, "gdekhayser" <gdekhayser@voyantinc.com> wrote:

>To any and all;
>
>I have a very large table (16Mil+ records), for which I want to delete
>about 8 Million records. There are a few indexes on this table.
>
>Is there a way that I can run either a query or a series of queries
>that will run against each record and delete based on criteria (date)?
> If I do a single DELETE query, it will take forever, lock the table,
>and my app that runs against it will stop INSERTING, which is bad.
>
>If I do a cursor, I think it locks the table also, so that won't do,
>right?
>
>Any help would be appreciated.
>
>Glenn Dekhayser
>Contentcatcher.com

With a table that size, have you thought of partitioning it by date? Then,
locks would be held only on the partition(s) that overlap the date range you
are deleting.