Question

In Oracle, I can re-create a view with a single statement, as shown here:

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW MY_VIEW AS
SELECT SOME_FIELD
FROM SOME_TABLE
WHERE SOME_CONDITIONS

As the syntax implies, this will drop the old view and re-create it with whatever definition I’ve given.

Is there an equivalent in MSSQL (SQL Server 2005 or later) that will do the same thing?

Answer 1

The solutions above though they will get the job done do so at the risk of dropping user permissions. I prefer to do my create or replace views or stored procedures as follows.

IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.views WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID(N'[dbo].[vw_myView]'))
    EXEC sp_executesql N'CREATE VIEW [dbo].[vw_myView] AS SELECT ''This is a code stub which will be replaced by an Alter Statement'' as [code_stub]'
GO

ALTER VIEW [dbo].[vw_myView]
AS
SELECT 'This is a code which should be replaced by the real code for your view' as [real_code]
GO