TRUNCATE SQL - Language Statements TRUNCATE empty a table TRUNCATE TRUNCATE [ TABLE ] name TRUNCATE quickly removes all rows from a table. It has the same effect as an unqualified DELETE but since it does not actually scan the table it is faster. This is most useful on large tables. name The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to be truncated. Only the owner of a table may TRUNCATE it. TRUNCATE cannot be used if there are foreign-key references to the table from other tables. Checking validity in such cases would require table scans, and the whole point is not to do one. TRUNCATE will not run any user-defined ON DELETE triggers that might exist for the table. Truncate the table bigtable: TRUNCATE TABLE bigtable; There is no TRUNCATE command in the SQL standard.