layout: global title: DROP TABLE displayTitle: DROP TABLE license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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Description

DROP TABLE deletes the table and removes the directory associated with the table from the file system if the table is not EXTERNAL table. If the table is not present it throws an exception.

In case of an external table, only the associated metadata information is removed from the metastore database.

Syntax

{% highlight sql %} DROP TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] table_identifier {% endhighlight %}

Parameter

Example

{% highlight sql %} -- Assumes a table named employeetable exists. DROP TABLE employeetable; +---------+--+ | Result | +---------+--+ +---------+--+

-- Assumes a table named employeetable exists in the userdb database DROP TABLE userdb.employeetable; +---------+--+ | Result | +---------+--+ +---------+--+

-- Assumes a table named employeetable does not exists. -- Throws exception DROP TABLE employeetable; Error: org.apache.spark.sql.AnalysisException: Table or view not found: employeetable; (state=,code=0)

-- Assumes a table named employeetable does not exists,Try with IF EXISTS -- this time it will not throw exception DROP TABLE IF EXISTS employeetable; +---------+--+ | Result | +---------+--+ +---------+--+

{% endhighlight %}

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