How to remove from a table using left join to get the id of the same table by using alias

Question

You can't specify target table 'cce_sa_fa' for update in FROM clause

This is the error that I received when tried to remove using the same table.

The following is the query that i have used to execute.

DELETE FROM `cce_sa_fa` WHERE id IN (SELECT cce_sa_fa.id FROM `cce_sa_fa` 
LEFT JOIN examinations ON examinations.id = cce_sa_fa.exam
WHERE `exam` IN (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94,95,96,97,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,109,110,111,112,113,114,115,116,117,119,120,121,122,123,124,125,126,127,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,139,140,141,142,143,144,145,146,147,149,150,151,152,153,154,155,156,307,308,309) 
AND examinations.name != cce_sa_fa.name)

Answer 1

You can use JOIN in the FROM part instead of WHERE. This is the multi-table delete syntax, details in mysql docs: DELETESyntax.

Example:

DELETE fa.* 
FROM cce_sa_fa AS fa
  JOIN examinations AS ex 
    ON ex.id = fa.exam
WHERE fa.exam IN (1,2,...) 
  AND ex.name <> fa.name ;

Another way would be to convert the IN subquery to EXISTS:

DELETE 
FROM cce_sa_fa AS fa
WHERE EXISTS
      ( SELECT * 
        FROM examinations AS ex 
        WHERE ex.id = fa.exam
          AND ex.name <> fa.name 
      ) 
WHERE fa.exam IN (1,2,...) ;