DBLINK_B...QL_DELETE(3)

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay bestie, welcome to the dblink_build_sql_delete(3) page from the PostgreSQL 17.11 docs — manual name folded in right here at the top, cute and everything. 💅

dblink_build_sql_delete builds a DELETE statement using the values you supply for your primary key fields. That's the whole job, and it ate. ✨

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

dblink_build_sql_delete(text relname,
                        int2vector primary_key_attnums,
                        integer num_primary_key_atts,
                        text[] tgt_pk_att_vals_array) returns text

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

dblink_build_sql_delete can be useful when you're doing selective replication of a local table to a remote database. It builds an SQL DELETE command that will delete the row with the given primary key values. highkey useful for that targeted-delete moment. 🫶

💖 ARGUMENTS 💖

• relname — the name of a local relation, like foo or myschema.mytab. If the name is mixed-case or has special characters, include double quotes, like "FooBar"; without quotes, the string gets folded to lower case. no cap, that's important. 🙈
• primary_key_attnums — attribute numbers (1-based) of the primary key fields, for example 1 2. yes, 1-based, not 0-based.
• num_primary_key_atts — the number of primary key fields. literally just the count.
• tgt_pk_att_vals_array — values of the primary key fields to be used in the resulting DELETE command. Each field is represented in text form. 📝

🌈 RETURN VALUE 🌈

Returns the requested SQL statement as text. slay. 💅

🧚 NOTES 🧚

As of PostgreSQL 9.0, the attribute numbers in primary_key_attnums are interpreted as logical column numbers, corresponding to the column's position in SELECT * FROM relname. Previous versions interpreted the numbers as physical column positions. There is a difference if any column(s) to the left of the indicated column have been dropped during the lifetime of the table.

bestie, that dropped-column caveat is real — don't skip the vibe check on your column positions. 💀

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

SELECT dblink_build_sql_delete('"MyFoo"', '1 2', 2, '{"1", "b"}');
           dblink_build_sql_delete
---------------------------------------------
 DELETE FROM "MyFoo" WHERE f1='1' AND f2='b'
(1 row)

xoxo, PostgreSQL 17.11 · 2026 · dblink_build_sql_delete(3) 💖✨