MS SQL Basics Tutorial: Deleting SQL tables

7.6.1 removed with Enterprise Manager

When you right-click the table you want to delete from the Enterprise Manager, select the Delete (delete) option from the shortcut menu, the Delete Object dialog box appears as shown in Figure 7-9, and you can delete the table by clicking the Drop All button. When you click the Show Dependencies button, a dialog box appears as shown in Figure 7-10. It lists the objects that the table relies on and the objects that are dependent on the table. You cannot delete a table when an object relies on a table.

7.6.2 Delete with Drop TABLE command

The drop table command can delete data in a table and table and all indexes, triggers, constraints, and license objects associated with the table (table-related views and stored procedures need to be removed with the drop view and drop procedure commands).

The syntax for the DROP TABLE command is as follows:

DROP TABLE table_name

The table to be deleted if it is not in the current database, specify the database and user name to which it belongs in table_name. Remove the foreign keyword constraint from the table associated with this table before deleting a table. When you delete a table, the bound rule or default value is automatically untied.

Note: system tables cannot be deleted.

Example 7-23: Deletes the table orders1 in the MyDB database.

drop table Mydb.dbo.orders1

Summary of this chapter

This chapter describes the knowledge of creating and managing database tables, and for a detailed introduction to changing the data in the table, see Chapter 11th "Database updates."

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