TRUNCATE - DATA DEFINITION LANGUAGE(DDL) TRUCNATE is considered a DDL statement, meaning that it is intended to alter how objects are defined in a database. Usually, DDL statements are CREATE, ALTER, or DROP, but TRUNCATE serves a particular purpose, that of resettting a table by removing all the rows. The methods of this differ between the RDBMS engines and I would recommend looking at the specifics of MySQL. The practical implications of a TRUNCATE are: