In general, you will not modify a secondary database directly. In order to modify a secondary database, you should modify the primary database and simply allow DB to manage the secondary modifications for you.
However, as a convenience, you can delete a SecondaryDatabase record directly. Doing so causes the associated primary key/data pair to be deleted. This in turn causes DB to delete all SecondaryDatabase records that reference the primary record.
You can use the SecondaryDatabase.delete() method to delete a secondary database record. Note that if your SecondaryDatabase contains duplicate records, then deleting a record from the set of duplicates causes all of the duplicates to be deleted as well.
SecondaryDatabase.delete() causes the previously describe delete operations to occur only if:
the SecondaryKeyCreator.createSecondaryKey() method returns true (see Implementing Key Creators for information on this interface and method).
the primary database is opened for write access.
If either of these conditions are not met, then no delete operations can be performed on the secondary database.
For example:
package com.sleepycat.examples.db.GettingStarted;
import com.sleepycat.db.DatabaseEntry;
import com.sleepycat.db.DatabaseException;
import com.sleepycat.db.OperationStatus;
import com.sleepycat.db.SecondaryDatabase;
...
try {
SecondaryDatabase mySecondaryDatabase = null;
// Omitting all database opens
...
String searchName = "John Doe";
DatabaseEntry searchKey =
new DatabaseEntry(searchName.getBytes("UTF-8"));
// Delete the first secondary record that uses "John Doe" as
// a key. This causes the primary record referenced by this secondary
// record to be deleted.
OperationStatus retVal = mySecondaryDatabase.delete(null, searchKey);
} catch (Exception e) {
// Exception handling goes here
}