DROP TABLE

A SQL DROP TABLE statement is used to delete a table definition and all data from a table.

This is very important to know that once a table is deleted all the information available in the table is lost forever, so we have to be very careful when using this command.

Let’s see the syntax to drop the table from the database.

DROP TABLE "table_name";  

Let us take an example:

First we verify STUDENTS table and then we would delete it from the database.

SQL> DESC STUDENTS;  

FIELD	TYPE	NULL	KEY	DEFAULT	EXTRA
ID	Int(11)	NO	PRI
NAME	Varchar(20)	NO
AGE	Int(11)	NO
ADDRESS	Varchar(25)	YES		NULL

4 rows in set (0.00 sec)  3

This shows that STUDENTS table is available in the database, so we can drop it as follows:

SQL>DROP TABLE STUDENTS;  

Now, use the following command to check whether table exists or not.

SQL> DESC STUDENTS;  

Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)  

As you can see, table is dropped so it doesn’t display it.

SQL DROP TABLE Example in MySQL

Let’s see the command to drop a table from the MySQL database.

DROP TABLE table_name;  

SQL DROP TABLE Example in Oracle

Let’s see the command to drop a table from Oracle database. It is same as MySQL.

DROP TABLE table_name;  

SQL DROP TABLE Example in Microsoft SQLServer

Let’s see the command to drop a table from SQLServer database. It is same as MySQL.

DROP TABLE table_name;