We recently received a question about how to write the code to delete all records returned from a query. Here’s the answer…
The following code example demonstrates how to delete bulk data from the Microsoft CRM 3.0 database. If you need to delete a very large amount of data, bulk delete may require a long period of time to complete. The main reason for that is cascading, which is triggered by the delete operation. If the entity instance that you are deleting has a system or parental relationship with other entity instances, the parent and all its children entity instances are deleted according to the cascading rules.
[C#]
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using DeleteAllCompetitors.CrmSdk;
namespace DeleteAllCompetitors
{
class BulkDelete
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// Set up the CRM Service.
CrmService service = new CrmService();
service.Credentials =
System.Net.CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;
// Create the ColumnSet that indicates the fields to be retrieved.
ColumnSet cols = new ColumnSet();
// Set the properties of the ColumnSet.
cols.Attributes = new string[] { "competitorid" };
// Create the ConditionExpression.
ConditionExpression condition = new ConditionExpression();
// Create the query expression.
QueryExpression query = new QueryExpression();
// Set the query to retrieve accounts.
query.EntityName = EntityName.competitor.ToString();
// Create the request object.
RetrieveMultipleRequest retrieive = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();
// Set the properties of the request object.
retrieive.Query = query;
// Execute the request.
RetrieveMultipleResponse retrieived =
(RetrieveMultipleResponse)service.Execute(retrieive);
BusinessEntityCollection competitors =
retrieived.BusinessEntityCollection;
for (int i = 0; i < competitors.BusinessEntities.Length; i++)
{
competitor entity = (competitor)competitors.BusinessEntities[i];
// The EntityName indicates the EntityType
// of the object being deleted.
service.Delete(EntityName.competitor.ToString(),
entity.competitorid.Value);
}
}
}
}
