Guidelines for Dropping Tables

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, except if any column in the table participates in a join index.

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; see Chapter 10, “Transactions and Versioning” for details.

DROP TABLE and TRUNCATE TABLE statements execute in seconds. The size of the data does not affect the speed of the operation.

For a full description see Reference: Statements and Options > SQL Statements > DROP Statement.