To delete a table definition, use a DROP TABLE
statement. Its form is:
DROP TABLE [IF EXISTS] table-name
where:
IF EXISTS is optional, and it causes
the drop statement to be ignored if a table with the
specified name does not exist in the store. If this
phrase is not specified, and the table does not
currently exist, then the DROP statement will fail with
an error.
table-name is the name of the table you want to drop.
Note that dropping a table is a lengthy operation because all table data currently existing in the store is deleted as a part of the drop operation.
If child tables are defined for the table that you are dropping, then they must be dropped first. For example, if you have tables:
| myTable |
| myTable.childTable1 |
| myTable.childTable2 |
then myTable.childTable1 and
myTable.childTable2 must be dropped before
you can drop myTable.