Fast purging of change data from a named change data database table by: (1) partitioning the table into partitions to separate data to be retained from data to be dropped and dropping the partition holding the data to be purged; or (2) creating a temporary change data database table and inserting the change data to be retained into a temporary table, dropping the named change data table, renaming the temporary table as the named table and inserting the change data within the temporary table into the renamed change table; or (3) creating a temporary change data table and copying data above a given value from the named table into the temporary database table, truncating the named table and inserting the data from the temporary into the named table and dropping the temporary table.