>i need to delete master related records without deleting the child ones. is it possible?
>thanks in advance.

I assume due to your question that you have set up referential integrity rules that prevent deleting the parent wihtout also deleting the children. Your question brings up an interesting discussion. The actual answer to the question "Can I delete the parent record without deleting the child records is, It dependends on your referential integrity rules. If the RI rule says you can't then you can't, and if the rule says you can then you can. Now here's the interesting part, if you have set up RI rules that prevent deleting the parent without deleting the children and now you find a situatio n where you want to delete a parent wihtout deleting the children one of two things exist. Either the RI rule you set up is WRONG or you are trying tp do something that your own rules say you shouldn't do.

You need to answer your own question. Is it OK in your database, according to the business rules you have established, to delete a parent record and leave the child records alone?