>
> Ugh. Ok, so this actually worked. It's just that it was SOOOOO slow on
> the DELETE that I thought the server had hung.
>
> Well I tried taking out the DELETE part of the equation. Performing a
> SELECT with this JOIN take just a few milliseconds to execute while.
> Performing a SELECT with this sub-select takes around 12 minutes.
>
> Too bad I can't do joins in delete statements, huh?

If you have to avoid the use of the server benefits in this area - i.e. I
think you are trying to do something which will work on dbf files as well as
gdb files...
then you're left with having to do all this at the client application side.
The fastest way to delete all children knowing only the parent id, would be
to select the children of parent.id, then delete each child thru a loop.
Alan