DELETE The DELETE command is used to remove rows from a table. A WHERE clause can be used to only remove some rows. If no WHERE condition is specified, all rows will be removed. After performing a DELETE operation you need to COMMIT or ROLLBACK the transaction to make the change permanent or to undo it. Note that this operation will cause all DELETE triggers on the table to fire. TRUNCATE TRUNCATE removes all rows from a table. The operation cannot be rolled back and no triggers will be fired. As such, TRUCATE is faster and doesn't use as much undo space as a DELETE. DROP The DROP command removes a table from the database. All the tables' rows, indexes and privileges will also be removed. No DML triggers will be fired. The operation cannot be rolled back. DROP and TRUNCATE are DDL commands, whereas DELETE is a DML command. Therefore DELETE operations can be rolled back (undone), while DROP and TRUNCATE operations cannot be rolled back.

来自:http://www.orafaq.com/faq/difference_between_truncate_delete_and_drop_commands

它方便的一个重要原因是，当您需要刷新数百万行表中的数据，但又不想重新构建它时。“Delete *”会花费很长时间，而Truncate对性能的影响可以忽略不计。

对于SQL Server或MySQL，如果有一个带有自动递增的PK, truncate将重置计数器。

TRUNCATE是DDL语句，而DELETE是DML语句。以下是两者的区别:

As TRUNCATE is a DDL (Data definition language) statement it does not require a commit to make the changes permanent. And this is the reason why rows deleted by truncate could not be rollbacked. On the other hand DELETE is a DML (Data manipulation language) statement hence requires explicit commit to make its effect permanent. TRUNCATE always removes all the rows from a table, leaving the table empty and the table structure intact whereas DELETE may remove conditionally if the where clause is used. The rows deleted by TRUNCATE TABLE statement cannot be restored and you can not specify the where clause in the TRUNCATE statement. TRUNCATE statements does not fire triggers as opposed of on delete trigger on DELETE statement

这里有一个非常好的与主题相关的链接。

这两个操作的另一个区别是，如果表包含一个标识列，则在TRUNCATE下该列的计数器将重置1(或为该列定义的种子值)。DELETE没有这种影响。

Truncate命令用于重新初始化表，它是一个删除表中所有行的DDL命令。DELETE是一个DML命令，用于根据某些条件删除一行或一组行，如果没有指定condition，则该命令将删除表中的所有行。