How do you drop a table?

SQLJunior~1 min read

DROP TABLE is used to delete a table in SQL. It completely removes the table along with all its data and structure.

Syntax:

sql

DROP TABLE Table_Name;

Example:

sql

DROP TABLE Employees;

Once the command runs, every piece of data in the table is irreversibly deleted.
If a table has relationships via foreign keys, some DBMSs will require those relationships to be removed first, or CASCADE to be used to remove dependent objects.

An example with removing dependent objects (PostgreSQL):

sql

DROP TABLE Employees CASCADE;

The takeaway: DROP TABLE is used only once a table is no longer needed, since recovering the data will be impossible without a backup.

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