Question

Can someone tell me if there is any difference between

DROP IF EXISTS [TABLE_NAME]

DROP [TABLE_NAME]

I am asking this because I am using JDBC template in my MVC web application. If I use DROP [TABLE_NAME] the error said that Table exist. And if I use DROP IF EXISTS [TABLE_NAME] it says bad SQL grammar. Can some one help?

Answer 1

Standard SQL syntax is

DROP TABLE table_name;

IF EXISTS is not standard; different platforms might support it with different syntax, or not support it at all. In PostgreSQL, the syntax is

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS table_name;

The first one will throw an error if the table doesn’t exist, or if other database objects depend on it. Most often, the other database objects will be foreign key references, but there may be others, too. (Views, for example.) The second will not throw an error if the table doesn’t exist, but it will still throw an error if other database objects depend on it.

To drop a table, and all the other objects that depend on it, use one of these.

DROP TABLE table_name CASCADE;
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS table_name CASCADE;

Use CASCADE with great care.