Drop or Delete Table - SQL

Drop or Delete Table - SQL statement is used to remove a table definition and all data, indexes, triggers, constraints, and permission specifications for that table.

NOTE: You have to be careful while using this command because once a table is deleted then all the information available in the table would also be lost forever.

Syntax:

Basic syntax of DROP TABLE statement is as follows:

DROP TABLE table_name;

Example:

Let us first verify CUSTOMERS table and then we would delete it from the database:

SQL> DESC CUSTOMERS;
+---------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field   | Type          | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| ID      | int(11)       | NO   | PRI |         |       |
| NAME    | varchar(20)   | NO   |     |         |       |
| AGE     | int(11)       | NO   |     |         |       |
| ADDRESS | char(25)      | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
| SALARY  | decimal(18,2) | YES  |     | NULL    |       |
+---------+---------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

This means CUSTOMERS table is available in the database, so let us drop it as follows:

SQL> DROP TABLE CUSTOMERS;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

Now, if you would try DESC command, then you would get error as follows:

SQL> DESC CUSTOMERS;
ERROR 1146 (42S02): Table 'TEST.CUSTOMERS' doesn't exist

Here, TEST is database name which we are using for our examples.