DROP DATABASE

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(walk you through the steps of deleting a database from the database server.)

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to use the MySQL DROP DATABASE statement to delete an existing database in the server.

Introduction to the MySQL DROP DATABASE statement

The DROP DATABASE statement drops all tables in the database and deletes the database permanently. Therefore, you need to be very careful when using this statement.

The following shows the syntax of the DROP DATABASE statement:

DROP DATABASE [IF EXISTS] database_name;

In this statement, you specify the name of the database which you want to delete after the DROP DATABASEkeywords.

If you drop a database that does not exist, MySQL will issue an error.

To prevent an error from occurring if you delete a non-existing database, you can use the IF EXISTS option. In this case, MySQL will terminate the statement without issuing any error.

The DROP DATABASE statement returns the number of tables it deleted.

In MySQL, the schema is the synonym for the database. Therefore, you can use them interchangeably:

DROP SCHEMA [IF EXISTS] database_name;

In the next section, we will use the testdb and testdb2 created in the CREATE DATABASE tutorial. If you do not have these databases available, you can follow the previous tutorial to create them.

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MySQL DROP DATABASE using mysql program example

DROP DATABASE using MySQL Workbench

Second, right-click the database that you want to remove, for example, testdb2 and choose the Drop Schema... option.

Third, MySQL Workbench displays a dialog to confirm the deletion.

If you choose Review SQL, you’ll see the SQL statement that will be executed. If you choose Drop Now, it’ll delete the database immediately.

To be safe, let’s choose Review SQL:

Fourth, once you are sure that the SQL statement is going to drop the right database, you can click the Executebutton to execute the statement.

MySQL returns the following output indicating that the database is dropped successfully. Because the testdb2 is an empty database, the number of affected rows is zero.

If you view the schemas pane, you will see that the testdb2 is not on the list anymore.

Summary

Use the MySQL DROP DATABASE statement to delete a database.