Oracle delete from tableA where a duplicate row is in tableB - oracle

Question

As the title says, I am looking for a way to remove all rows from TableA where there is a matching row in TableB.
the Tables A & B have about 30 columns in them so a WHERE A.col1 = B.col1 etc would be a little problematical. Ideally I was hoping for something like
DELETE FROM tableA WHERE IN TableB
(overly simplified by this type of thing)

Answer 1

IN clause can compare all columns returned from select
DELETE FROM tableA WHERE ( col1,col2,col3,.. ) IN ( select col1,col2,col3... FROM TableB );

Answer 2

The brute force way to establish if two records from each table are the same is to just compare every column:
DELETE
FROM tableA a
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM tableB b WHERE a.col1 = b.col1 AND a.col2 = b.col2 AND ...
a.col30 = b.col30);

Answer 3

You could create function which checks structures of tables and, if they are the same, creates string containing correct conditions to compare.
For example here are two tables:
create table t1 (id, name, age) as (
select 1, 'Tom', 67 from dual union all
select 2, 'Tia', 42 from dual union all
select 3, 'Bob', 16 from dual );
create table t2 (id, name, age) as (
select 1, 'Tom', 51 from dual union all
select 3, 'Bob', 16 from dual );
Now use function:
select generate_condition('T1', 'T2') from dual;
result:
T1.ID = T2.ID and T1.NAME = T2.NAME and T1.AGE = T2.AGE
Copy this, paste and run delete query:
delete from t1 where exists (select 1 from t2 where <<PASTE_HERE>>)
Here is the function, adjust it if needed. I used user_tab_columns so if tables are on different schemas you need all_tab_columns and compare owners too. If you have Oracle 11g you can replace loop with listagg(). Second table has to contain all columns of first table and they have to be same type and length.
create or replace function generate_condition(i_t1 in varchar2, i_t2 in varchar2)
return varchar2 is
v varchar2(1000) := '';
begin
for rec in (select column_name, u2.column_id
from user_tab_cols u1
left join (select * from user_tab_cols where table_name = i_t2) u2
using (column_name, data_type, data_length)
where u1.table_name = i_t1 order by u1.column_id)
loop
if rec.column_id is null then
v := 'ERR: incompatible structures';
goto end_loop;
end if;
v := v||' and '||i_t1||'.'||rec.column_name
||' = '||i_t2||'.'||rec.column_name;
end loop;
<< end_loop >>
return(ltrim(v, ' and '));
end;
If you want to avoid running process manually you need dynamic PL/SQL.

Answer 4

create table tableA (a NUMBER, b VARCHAR2(5), c INTEGER);
create table tableB (a NUMBER, b VARCHAR2(5), c INTEGER);
As you said
WHERE A.col1 = B.col1 etc would be a little problematical
you could intersect the tables and mention all columns from tableA one time, like this:
delete tableA
where (a,b,c) in (select * from tableA
intersect
select * from tableB);