Drop View (DROP VIEW)

Description

The DROP VIEW command is used to drop a view from the current schema or a specified schema.

Views do not store data themselves; they only store query definitions, so dropping a view does not affect the data in the underlying tables. Note: Dropped views cannot be restored via UNDROP. To recover, you must re-execute the CREATE VIEW statement.

Syntax

DROP VIEW [ IF EXISTS ] [schema_name.]<view_name>

Parameter Description

Parameter	Required	Description
`IF EXISTS`	No	If the specified view does not exist, no error is raised; the operation is silently skipped
`schema_name`	No	The name of the schema. If not specified, the current schema is used by default
`view_name`	Yes	The name of the view to drop

Return Value

DROP VIEW returns no result set on success. If the view does not exist and IF EXISTS is not used, it returns an error:

CZLH-42P01: NotFound: Object not found - Type[TABLE], ...

Examples

Example 1: Drop a view in the current schema

DROP VIEW myview;

Example 2: Drop a view in a specified schema

DROP VIEW my_schema.myview;

Example 3: Safe drop (no error if the view does not exist)

DROP VIEW IF EXISTS my_schema.myview;

Notes

Views Cannot Be Recovered: Unlike tables (UNDROP TABLE) or dynamic tables, views cannot be restored after being dropped via the UNDROP command. Before dropping, confirm that you have saved the view's creation statement, which can be obtained using SHOW CREATE TABLE <view_name>.
Only the Definition Is Removed: Views do not store data, so dropping a view does not affect any data in the underlying tables.
Dependency Impact: If other views or queries depend on the dropped view, those dependent objects will error when queried. Please check dependencies in advance.

Related Commands

CREATE VIEW: Create a view
SHOW CREATE TABLE: View the creation statement of a view
SHOW TABLES WHERE is_view=true: List all views