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Auto delete policy

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Applies to: ✅ Microsoft Fabric ✅ Azure Data Explorer

An auto delete policy on a table sets an expiry date for the table. The table is automatically deleted at this expiry time. Unlike the retention policy, which determines when data (extents) are removed from a table, the auto delete policy drops the entire table.

The auto delete policy can be useful for temporary staging tables. Temporary staging tables are used for data preparation, until the data is moved to its permanent location. We recommend explicitly dropping temporary tables when they're no longer needed. Only use the auto delete policy as a fallback mechanism in case the explicit deletion doesn't occur.

Tip

If you're working with temporary tables, the following commands may also be useful: create table based-on and replace extents.

Policy object

An auto delete policy includes the following properties:

  • ExpiryDate:

    • Date and time value indicating when the table should be deleted.
    • The deletion time is imprecise, and could occur few hours later than the time specified in the ExpiryDate property.
    • The value specified can't be null and it must be greater than current time.

  • DeleteIfNotEmpty:

    • Boolean value indicating whether table should be dropped even if there are still extents in it.
    • Defaults to false.

Related content

For more information, see auto delete policy commands.