I guess it depends on what people mean here by "delete". Do they mean erased as in no more data records, or no longer viewable / interfaceable from an application level. For instance, once I'm prod I almost always set a deleted flag instead of actually deleting for whatever piece of data it is in my CRUD actions. The Information is still there, and can be restored at any time, but its still "deleted" as far as my app is concerned.