The error ERROR 1451 (23000): Cannot delete or update a parent row: a foreign key constraint fails indicates that you are trying to delete records from the Employee table (the "parent" table) that are still referenced by records in another table, specifically JobTitle (the "child" table), via a foreign key constraint (JobTitle_ibfk_1).
To resolve this, you must first delete the dependent records from the JobTitle table before deleting the corresponding records from the Employee table.
Step 1: Delete records from the JobTitle table that reference employees hired before '2017-01-01'.
DELETEFROMJobTitleWHEREEmpIDIN(SELECTEmpIDFROMEmployeeWHEREHireDate<′2017−01−01′);
Step 2: After the dependent records are removed, you can now delete the employee records from the Employee table.
DELETEFROMEmployeeWHEREHireDate<′2017−01−01′;
The complete sequence of commands to execute is:
DELETE FROM JobTitle WHERE EmpID IN (SELECT EmpID FROM Employee WHERE HireDate < '2017-01-01');
DELETE FROM Employee WHERE HireDate < '2017-01-01';
This will first remove the job titles associated with the employees you want to delete, and then remove the employees themselves.
What's next? 📸