Delete Records in SQL Server using Python

In this guide, you’ll see how to delete records in SQL Server directly from Python.

Here are the steps that you may follow.

Steps to Delete Records in SQL Server using Python

Step 1: Install the Pyodbc Library

If you haven’t already done so, install the pyodbc library using the following command:

pip install pyodbc

Step 2: Connect Python to SQL Server

Next, connect Python to SQL Server.

For demonstration purposes, let’s use the information below in order to establish the connection:

• The server name is: RON-SQLEXPRESS
• The database name is: test_database
• The table name is: product

In addition, the ‘product‘ table contains the following data:

Here is the code to connect Python to SQL Server for our example (you can check the following guide for the complete steps to connect Python to SQL Server):

import pyodbc

conn = pyodbc.connect(
    "Driver={SQL Server};"
    "Server=RON-SQLEXPRESS;"
    "Database=test_database;"
    "Trusted_Connection=yes;"
)

cursor = conn.cursor()

cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM product")

for i in cursor:
    print(i)

Once you run the above code in Python (adjusted to your connection information), you’ll see this data:

(1, 'Computer', 800)
(2, 'TV', 1200)
(3, 'Printer', 150)
(4, 'Desk', 400)
(5, 'Chair', 120)
(6, 'Tablet', 300)

Step 3: Delete Records in SQL Server using Python

Let’s suppose that you’d like to delete the last two records from the ‘product‘ table (i.e., delete the ‘Chair’ record with the product_id of 5, and delete the ‘Tablet’ record with the product_id of 6).

Here is the complete Python code to delete those records:

import pyodbc

conn = pyodbc.connect(
    "Driver={SQL Server};"
    "Server=RON-SQLEXPRESS;"
    "Database=test_database;"
    "Trusted_Connection=yes;"
)

cursor = conn.cursor()

cursor.execute(
    """
    DELETE FROM product 
    WHERE product_id in (5,6)
    """
)

conn.commit()

Don’t forget to add conn.commit() at the end of the code to execute your changes.

Step 4: Verify that the Records were Deleted

For the final step, run this SELECT query in SQL Server in order to verify that the records were deleted:

SELECT * FROM product

As you can see, the 2 records (the ‘Chair’ and ‘Tablet’ records) are no longer present in the ‘product’ table:

You can check the following guides for the steps to:

• Insert Values into SQL Server using Python
• Update Records in SQL Server using Python