Syntax

DROP VIEW [IF EXISTS]
    view_name [, view_name] ...
    [RESTRICT | CASCADE]

Description

DROP VIEW removes one or more views. You must have the DROP privilege for each view. If any of the views named in the argument list do not exist, MariaDB returns an error indicating by name which non-existing views it was unable to drop, but it also drops all of the views in the list that do exist.

The IF EXISTS clause prevents an error from occurring for views that don't exist. When this clause is given, a NOTE is generated for each non-existent view. See SHOW WARNINGS.

RESTRICT and CASCADE, if given, are parsed and ignored.

It is possible to specify view names as db_name.view_name. This is useful to delete views from multiple databases with one statement. See Identifier Qualifiers for details.

The DROP privilege is required to use DROP TABLE on non-temporary tables. For temporary tables, no privilege is required, because such tables are only visible for the current session.

If a view references another view, it will be possible to drop the referenced view. However, the other view will reference a view which does not exist any more. Thus, querying it will produce an error similar to the following:

ERROR 1356 (HY000): View 'db_name.view_name' references invalid table(s) or 
column(s) or function(s) or definer/invoker of view lack rights to use them

This problem is reported in the output of CHECK TABLE.

Note that it is not necessary to use DROP VIEW to replace an existing view, because CREATE VIEW has an OR REPLACE clause.

Examples

DROP VIEW v,v2;

Given views v and v2, but no view v3

DROP VIEW v,v2,v3;
ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'v3'

DROP VIEW IF EXISTS v,v2,v3;
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.01 sec)

SHOW WARNINGS;
+-------+------+-------------------------+
| Level | Code | Message                 |
+-------+------+-------------------------+
| Note  | 1051 | Unknown table 'test.v3' |
+-------+------+-------------------------+

See Also

• CREATE VIEW
• ALTER VIEW
• SHOW CREATE VIEWS
• INFORMATION SCHEMA VIEWS Table