DROP VIEW
Removes a view from the database. Multiple views can be dropped with a single DROP VIEW command. This command is not reversible.
Syntax
DROP VIEW [ IF EXISTS ] name [, ... ] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]
Parameters
- IF EXISTS
-
Clause that indicates that if the specified view doesn’t exist, the command should make no changes and return a message that the view doesn't exist, rather than terminating with an error.
This clause is useful when scripting, so the script doesn’t fail if DROP VIEW runs against a nonexistent view.
- name
-
Name of the view to be removed.
- CASCADE
-
Clause that indicates to automatically drop objects that depend on the view, such as other views.
To create a view that is not dependent on other database objects, such as views and tables, include the WITH NO SCHEMA BINDING clause in the view definition. For more information, see CREATE VIEW.
- RESTRICT
-
Clause that indicates not to drop the view if any objects depend on it. This action is the default.
Examples
The following example drops the view called event:
drop view event;
To remove a view that has dependencies, use the CASCADE option. For example, say we start with a table called EVENT. We then create the eventview view of the EVENT table, using the CREATE VIEW command, as shown in the following example:
create view eventview as select dateid, eventname, catid from event where catid = 1;
Now, we create a second view called myeventview, that is based on the first view eventview:
create view myeventview as select eventname, catid from eventview where eventname <> ' ';
At this point, two views have been created: eventview and myeventview.
The myeventview view is a child view witheventview as its parent.
To delete the eventview view, the obvious command to use is the following:
drop view eventview;
Notice that if you run this command in this case, you will get the following error:
drop view eventview; ERROR: can't drop view eventview because other objects depend on it HINT: Use DROP ... CASCADE to drop the dependent objects too.
To remedy this, execute the following command (as suggested in the error message):
drop view eventview cascade;
Both eventview and myeventview have now been dropped successfully.
The following example either drops the eventview view if it exists, or does nothing and returns a message if it does not:
drop view if exists eventview;
