Linq to Sql: How to quickly clear a table

c# linq-to-sql delete-row
Svish picture Svish · Oct 4, 2009 · Viewed 83.6k times · Source

To delete all the rows in a table, I am currently doing the following:

context.Entities.DeleteAllOnSubmit(context.Entities);
context.SubmitChanges();

However, this seems to be taking ages. Is there a faster way?

Answer

Christian C. Salvadó picture Christian C. Salvadó · Oct 4, 2009

You could do a normal SQL truncate or delete command, using the DataContext.ExecuteCommand method:

context.ExecuteCommand("DELETE FROM Entity");

Or

context.ExecuteCommand("TRUNCATE TABLE Entity");

The way you are deleting is taking long because Linq to SQL generates a DELETE statement for each entity, there are other type-safe approaches to do batch deletes/updates, check the following articles:

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