Question

I have created a procedure such as the following

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE drop_if_exists (table_name IN varchar2)
IS
BEGIN
        EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE table_name';
EXCEPTION
      WHEN OTHERS THEN
         IF SQLCODE != -942 THEN
             RAISE;
         END IF;
END;

When I run it as drop_if_exists ( ‘my_table’ ) it says everything was executed successfully, but any table called my_table will still exist after the call to the procedure. Changing to uppercase makes no difference. I guess that the variable simply is not substituted … Any ideas on how to fix it?

Answer 1

You are dropping a table named “table_name”, what is different to deleting the table you pass in the parameter.

Try this:

EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE ' || table_name ;

Anyway, I would NOT advice doing that. Your code is potentially dangerous.