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. TRUNCATE TRUNCATE removes all rows from a table. The operation cannot be rolled back and no triggers will be fired. As such, TRUNCATE is faster and doesn't use as much undo space as a DELETE. Table level lock will be added when Truncating. 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. Row level lock will be added when deleting.

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

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和delete的区别如下:

+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
|                Truncate                |                    Delete                    |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| We can't Rollback after performing     | We can Rollback after delete.                |
| Truncate.                              |                                              |
|                                        |                                              |
| Example:                               | Example:                                     |
| BEGIN TRAN                             | BEGIN TRAN                                   |
| TRUNCATE TABLE tranTest                | DELETE FROM tranTest                         |
| SELECT * FROM tranTest                 | SELECT * FROM tranTest                       |
| ROLLBACK                               | ROLLBACK                                     |
| SELECT * FROM tranTest                 | SELECT * FROM tranTest                       |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| Truncate reset identity of table.      | Delete does not reset identity of table.     |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| It locks the entire table.             | It locks the table row.                      |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| Its DDL(Data Definition Language)      | Its DML(Data Manipulation Language)          |
| command.                               | command.                                     |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| We can't use WHERE clause with it.     | We can use WHERE to filter data to delete.   |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| Trigger is not fired while truncate.   | Trigger is fired.                            |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+
| Syntax :                               | Syntax :                                     |
| 1) TRUNCATE TABLE table_name           | 1) DELETE FROM table_name                    |
|                                        | 2) DELETE FROM table_name WHERE              |
|                                        |    example_column_id IN (1,2,3)              |
+----------------------------------------+----------------------------------------------+

对原始答案的一个小修正——删除也会产生大量的重做(因为undo本身是由重做保护的)。这可以从autotrace输出中看到:

SQL> delete from t1;

10918 rows deleted.

Elapsed: 00:00:00.58

Execution Plan
----------------------------------------------------------
   0      DELETE STATEMENT Optimizer=FIRST_ROWS (Cost=43 Card=1)
   1    0   DELETE OF 'T1'
   2    1     TABLE ACCESS (FULL) OF 'T1' (TABLE) (Cost=43 Card=1)




Statistics
----------------------------------------------------------
         30  recursive calls
      12118  db block gets
        213  consistent gets
        142  physical reads
    3975328  redo size
        441  bytes sent via SQL*Net to client
        537  bytes received via SQL*Net from client
          4  SQL*Net roundtrips to/from client
          2  sorts (memory)
          0  sorts (disk)
      10918  rows processed

DELETE语句可以有一个WHERE子句来删除特定的记录，而TRUNCATE语句不需要任何子句并擦除整个表。 重要的是，DELETE语句记录删除日期，而TRUNCATE语句不记录删除日期。

如果不小心使用Delete/Truncate从表中删除了所有数据。您可以回滚已提交的事务。恢复上次备份并运行事务日志，直到将要执行删除/截断操作。

以下相关信息来自一篇博客文章:

While working on database, we are using Delete and Truncate without knowing the differences between them. In this article we will discuss the difference between Delete and Truncate in Sql. Delete: Delete is a DML command. Delete statement is executed using a row lock,each row in the table is locked for deletion. We can specify filters in where clause. It deletes specified data if where condition exists. Delete activities a trigger because the operation are logged individually. Slower than Truncate because it Keeps logs Truncate Truncate is a DDL command. Truncate table always lock the table and page but not each row.As it removes all the data. Cannot use Where condition. It Removes all the data. Truncate table cannot activate a trigger because the operation does not log individual row deletions. Faster in performance wise, because it doesn't keep any logs. Note: Delete and Truncate both can be rolled back when used with Transaction. If Transaction is done, means committed then we can not rollback Truncate command, but we can still rollback Delete command from Log files, as delete write records them in Log file in case it is needed to rollback in future from log files. If you have a Foreign key constraint referring to the table you are trying to truncate, this won't work even if the referring table has no data in it. This is because the foreign key checking is done with DDL rather than DML. This can be got around by temporarily disabling the foreign key constraint(s) to the table. Delete table is a logged operation. So the deletion of each row gets logged in the transaction log, which makes it slow. Truncate table also deletes all the rows in a table, but it won't log the deletion of each row instead it logs the deallocation of the data pages of the table, which makes it faster. ~ If accidentally you removed all the data from table using Delete/Truncate. You can rollback committed transaction. Restore the last backup and run transaction log till the time when Delete/Truncate is about to happen.