Truncate a table in GBQ

Question

I am trying to truncate an existing table in GBQ but the below command fails when I run it. Is there any specific command or syntax to do that. I looked into GBQ documentation but no luck.

TRUNCATE TABLE [dw_test.test]; 

Answer 1

While BigQuery didn't used to support anything other than SELECTs, it now does as long as you uncheck "Use Legacy SQL" in the query options. There is no truncation, but you can delete:

DELETE from my_table WHERE 1=1 

Note that BigQuery requires the use of WHERE in the DELETE, so if you want to delete everything you need to use a statement that will always be true.

Answer 2

Good news, TRUNCATE TABLE is supported by now: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/reference/standard-sql/dml-syntax#truncate_table_statement

TRUNCATE TABLE [[project_name.]dataset_name.]table_name 

However, please note that this will not work / is not supported, if a partition filter is required through your table definition.