Truncating tables

Deleting the whole table takes lot of time, as MySQL performs operations row by row. The quickest way to delete all of the rows of a table (preserving the table structure) is to use the TRUNCATE TABLE statement.

Truncate is a DDL operation in MySQL, meaning once the data is truncated, it cannot be rolled back:

mysql> TRUNCATE TABLE customers;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.03 sec)