The DELETE statement

To delete rows from a table, a program executes a DELETE statement. The DELETE statement can specify rows in the usual way, with a WHERE clause, or it can refer to a single row, the last one fetched through a specified cursor.

Whenever you delete rows, you must consider whether rows in other tables depend on the deleted rows. This problem of coordinated deletions is covered in Modify data. The problem is the same when deletions are made from within a program.