Question

Under the structure tab, when EXPORTing a database using phpmyadmin there is a check box labeled:
Add DROP TABLE / VIEW / PROCEDURE / FUNCTION
What does this do?

Answer 1

When creating a table, view, procedure, or function, it will add a DROP statement before it. The result of this is that even if the item exists, it will still be created.

For example: If you have a table called users and you run the export script without the DROP checkbox, it will attempt to create the users table again but will fail since it already exists. If you check it, it will drop the table before it is created (if it exists) to ensure the creation will always be successful.

Of course this can be dangerous if you have data in the table that you don’t want to lose.