How can you remove all data from a table efficiently? Using the delete command can take a very long time if you have lots of data.

If you want to delete all rows from the table – the simplest way to do this is to use the TRUNCATE command.

TRUNCATE TABLE table_name

Remember that the table cannot have foreign keys constraints, but there is a workaround. You can delete foreign keys temporarily and recreate them afterward.

Action steps:

• Drop the FK constraints
• Execute TRUNCATE command
• Recreate the FK constraints

Once you removed all rows – consider resetting the identity value as follows:

DBCC CHECKIDENT ('table_name', RESEED, 0)

Shout out to Piotr Bach for the article that can be found here