Truncate Table

[kokoro011]

Instead of dropping table and creating a new one, is there a way to truncate/delete all records in an existing table to then loading up the new data?

[agawronski]

I'm sure this is possible. Whether there is a benefit is debatable. From what I understand it is better to drop and create: "COPY loads large amounts of data much more efficiently than using INSERT statements, and stores the data more effectively as well." (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c_best-practices-use-copy.html).

Is there a specific reason that it is better? @yaojiach do you have any thoughts on this?

[agawronski]

@kokoro011 was this request due to performance or another reason? Will be closing this issue if there is no benefit to truncation.

[yaojiach]

It could be helpful when you don't want to append to an existing table and don't want to re-specify the column types either.

Maybe we can run a truncate and then use append = true in this case.