I want a quick way to delete all records relating to a particular 'master' record from both the 'master' table and all associated tables. This is primarily so that I can easily enter test records and then delete all trace of them, which would take a long time manually given that there are dozens of tables where the record could be referenced.
So, in summary, in any table which contains a column called AdmissionID, I want to delete all records where the AdmissionID is equal to a value I will specify. I thought I could do this quite easily. Here's my stored procedure:
ALTER PROCEDURE [Admin].[sp_RemoveByAdmissionID]
@admissionID int
AS
--Removes records from all tables relating the AdmissionID entered
DECLARE @loop INT
DECLARE @object sysname
DECLARE @cmdstring varchar(500)
IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#TEMP') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE #TEMP
END
SELECT
TABLE_NAME
,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY TABLE_NAME) ROWID
INTO #TEMP
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
WHILE @loop <= (SELECT MAX(ROWID) FROM #TEMP)
BEGIN
SELECT @object = TABLE_NAME FROM #TEMP WHERE ROWID = @loop
IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM SYS.COLUMNS WHERE Name = 'AdmissionID' AND Object_ID = Object_ID(@object))
BEGIN
SET @cmdstring = 'DELETE FROM ' + @object + ' WHERE AdmissionID = ' + @admissionID
Exec(@cmdstring)
END
SET @loop += 1
END
Unfortunately, executing this procedure doesn't delete any records from anywhere. I suspected the problem might be to do with my parameter not being enclosed in quotation marks in the line where I build up the cmdstring string, but even attempting to mitigate for this doesn't seem to have worked.
Any advice on where I'm going wrong, or if there's a simpler way to do this? I'd prefer not to use cascading deletes on my PK-FK relationships.
UPDATE Following the advice of Luv I found that his query does return a very nice list of the exact commands I want to use. I thought it'd be easy from there, but I still can't make this work. The new SP I'm trying is as follows:
ALTER PROCEDURE TEST
@admissionID VARCHAR(10)
AS
DECLARE @loop INT
DECLARE @cmd VARCHAR(500)
IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#TEMP') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
DROP TABLE #TEMP
END
SELECT 'DELETE FROM '+ C.TABLE_NAME +' WHERE AdmissionID = '+@admissionID AS cmd
,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY 'DELETE FROM '+ C.TABLE_NAME +' WHERE AdmissionID = '+@admissionID) ROWID
INTO #TEMP
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS C
INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES T on C.TABLE_NAME=T.TABLE_NAME
WHERE C.COLUMN_NAME='AdmissionID'
AND T.TABLE_TYPE='BASE TABLE'
WHILE @loop <= (SELECT MAX(ROWID) FROM #TEMP)
BEGIN
SELECT @cmd = cmd
FROM #TEMP
WHERE ROWID = @loop
EXEC(@cmd)
SET @loop += 1
END