Is deleting all records in a table a bad practice in SQL Server?

Question

I am moving a system from a VB/Access app to SQL server. One common thing in the access database is the use of tables to hold data that is being calculated and then using that data for a report.
eg.

delete from treporttable
insert into treporttable (.... this thing and that thing)
Update treportable set x = x * price where (...etc)  

and then report runs from treporttable

I have heard that SQL server does not like it when all records from a table are deleted as it creates huge logs etc. I tried temp sql tables but they don't persists long enough for the report which is in a different process to run and report off of.

There are a number of places where this is done to different report tables in the application. The reports can be run many times a day and have a large number of records created in the report tables.

Can anyone tell me if there is a best practise for this or if my information about the logs is incorrect and this code will be fine in SQL server.

Answer 1

If you do not need to log the deletion activity you can use the truncate table command.

From books online:

TRUNCATE TABLE is functionally identical to DELETE statement with no WHERE clause: both remove all rows in the table. But TRUNCATE TABLE is faster and uses fewer system and transaction log resources than DELETE.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260621(SQL.80).aspx