Database Management

TSDB for InfluxDB® provides a complete set of statements for you to manage databases. This topic describes how to execute the DELETE statement.

For more information about SHOW statements, such as SHOW DATABASES and SHOW RETENTION POLICIES, see the Schema exploration topic.

The command-line interface (CLI) of TSDB for InfluxDB® is used in the examples that are provided in this topic. You can also use the HTTP API to run commands. To do this, send GET requests to the /query endpoint and use the q parameter in the URL to specify the commands. For more information about the HTTP API, see the “Use the HTTP API to query data” topic.

Data management

Execute the DELETE statement to delete the specified series

You can execute the DELETE statement to delete all the points of a series in a database. However, this operation does not delete the series from the index. In the WHERE clause of the DELETE statement, you can specify the time interval based on your business requirements.

The DELETE statement uses the following syntax. You must include at least one of the following clauses in the DELETE statement: FROM and WHERE clauses.

DELETE FROM <measurement_name> WHERE [<tag_key>='<tag_value>'] | [<time interval>]

Delete all the data that is associated with the h2o_feet measurement.

> DELETE FROM "h2o_feet"

Delete the data where the tag value of the randtag tag key is 3 in the h2o_quality measurement.

> DELETE FROM "h2o_quality" WHERE "randtag" = '3'

Delete all the data that is generated before January 1, 2016 in the database.

> DELETE WHERE time < '2016-01-01'

If the DELETE operation is successful, no result is returned.

Pay attention to the following considerations when you execute the DELETE statement:

• You can use regular expressions to specify measurement names in the FROM clause of the DELETE statement. You can also use regular expressions to specify tag values in the WHERE clause of the DELETE statement.
• You cannot specify fields in the WHERE clause of the DELETE statement.
• If you need to delete the data that is generated after the time returned by the now() function, you must specify the corresponding time period. This is because the DELETE SERIES statement deletes the data that is generated before the time returned by the now() function (time < now()) by default.

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