Dropping a table deletes all the records in the table and then removes the table definition.
The following DROP TABLE statement deletes all the records in the skill table and then removes the definition of the skill table from the database:
DROP TABLE skill
Like the CREATE statement, the DROP statement automatically executes a COMMIT before and after dropping the table. This makes permanent all changes to the database since the last COMMIT or ROLLBACK.
The DROP statement also drops all indexes on the table.
If you only want to remove data rows but not the table itself, use the TRUNCATE TABLE statement. If you truncate a table while other users are reading from it, the normal rules of table versioning apply, that is, old table versions remain until the transactions of the readers complete.
DROP TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE statements execute in seconds. The size of the data does not affect the speed of the operation.