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Asked: 2026-05-11T07:56:22+00:00

I’m trying to achieve what the code below suggests, but I’m getting the error

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I’m trying to achieve what the code below suggests, but I’m getting the error Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'view' on both the create and alter lines. 

IF Object_ID('TestView') IS NULL     BEGIN         create view TestView         as         . . .     END ELSE     BEGIN         ALTER view TestView         as         . . .        END
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  1. Because ALTER/CREATE commands can’t be within BEGIN/END blocks. You need to test for existence and the drop it before doing a create

    IF Object_ID('TestView') IS NOT NULL     DROP VIEW TestView  GO  CREATE VIEW TestView    as    . . .  GO

    If you are woried about the permissions being lost you can script the GRANT statements as well and re-run those at the end.

    You could wrap the create/alter into a string and do an EXEC – that might get ugly for large views

    DECLARE @SQL as varchar(4000)  -- set to body of view SET @SQL = 'SELECT X, Y, Z FROM TABLE'   IF Object_ID('TestView') IS NULL     SET @SQL = 'CREATE VIEW TestView AS ' + @SQL ELSE         SET @SQL = 'ALTER VIEW TestView AS ' + @SQL  EXEC(@SQL)
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