Drop all databases from server

Question

I have a server (SQL Server 2005) with more than 300 databases. I don't want to right-click one by one and select Delete.

How can I delete all databases easily?

Answer 1

You can do this through the SSMS GUI. Select the Databases node then F7 to bring up Object Explorer Details, Select all databases that you want to delete, Hit "Delete" and select the "Close Existing Connections" and "Continue after error" options.

Alternatively through TSQL you can do

EXEC sp_MSforeachdb '
IF DB_ID(''?'') > 4
BEGIN
EXEC(''
ALTER DATABASE [?] SET SINGLE_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE
DROP DATABASE [?]
'')
END'

Answer 2

And here is my solution for the same problem:

-- drops all user databases
DECLARE @command nvarchar(max)
SET @command = ''

SELECT  @command = @command
+ 'ALTER DATABASE [' + [name] + ']  SET single_user with rollback immediate;'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
+ 'DROP DATABASE [' + [name] +'];'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
FROM  [master].[sys].[databases] 
 where [name] not in ( 'master', 'model', 'msdb', 'tempdb');

SELECT @command
EXECUTE sp_executesql @command

Answer 3

The safe way of deleting (dropping) all databases in MS-SQL using T-SQL is to exclude all system databases, and any other database(s) that you want to keep, and special databases such as Data Warehouse database "DW", Report server database.

Excluding all the databases that we want to keep including all system databases will make it safe to delete just everything else that we don't want to keep.

For example:

use master
go
declare @dbnames nvarchar(max)
declare @statement nvarchar(max)
set @dbnames = ''
set @statement = ''
select @dbnames = @dbnames + ',[' + name + ']' from sys.databases 
    where name 
    NOT IN ('master','model','msdb','tempdb') 
    AND name NOT LIKE '%AdventureWorks%' -- Database to keep 
    AND name NOT LIKE '%DW%' -- Data warehouse database
    AND name NOT LIKE '%ReportServer%' -- Report server database
if len(@dbnames) = 0
    begin
    print 'no databases to drop'
    end
else
    begin
    set @statement = 'drop database ' + substring(@dbnames, 2, len(@dbnames))
    print @statement
    exec sp_executesql @statement
    end
go

Answer 4

I used the answer provided by Pellared and modified it slightly.

-- drops all user databases
DECLARE @command nvarchar(max)
SET @command = ''

SELECT  @command = @command
+ 'ALTER DATABASE [' + [name] + ']  SET single_user with rollback immediate;'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
+ 'DROP DATABASE [' + [name] +'];'+CHAR(13)+CHAR(10)
FROM  [master].[sys].[databases] 
where [name] like 'DBName%';

-- PRINT @COMMAND
EXECUTE sp_executesql @command

Answer 5

I've been confronted to a problem with my databases, and the solutions above weren't working.

I simply wanted to delete all my databases, but I had a problem with their names. Indeed, I had databases named like this :

093e83d-somename;
39s2ak3-anothername;

The easier way to delete these database (tested on MariaDB) is to execute the following command :

DROP DATABASE `093e83d-somename`;

This kind of name seems to be a problem when we directly want to execute a SQL command from a bash file, because we have to specify the database's name between back quotes (``).

If you have the same problem, and if you have a lot of databases, you just have to create a batch script with all the commands you need, and then execute this one in your SQL server.

Example with test.sh :

#!/bin/bash

# Informations needed
MUSER="root"
MPASS="pass"

# We get the needed binaries
MYSQL=$(which mysql)
AWK=$(which awk)
GREP=$(which grep)

# We get all the DB names in DB
DB=$($MYSQL -u $MUSER -p$MPASS -e 'show databases' | $AWK '{ print $1}' | $GREP -v '^Databases' )

# For each database, we write the drop command in the file test.sql
for t in $DB
do
    echo -e "DROP DATABASE \`$t\`;" >> test.sql
done

# We execute the created SQL file with all the DROP commands
$MYSQL -u $MUSER -p$MPASS -e 'source test.sql;'

# We finally delete the created file.
rm test.sql

I think that this script is working in all cases. Hope this helped.

Answer 6

You can use Cursor like this:

DECLARE @DBName VARCHAR (64)
DECLARE @SQL VARCHAR (255)

DECLARE DROPDB CURSOR FOR 
SELECT name FROM sys.databases
WHERE name NOT IN ('master','model','msdb','tempdb','distribution','ReportServer','ReportServerTempDB')

OPEN DROPDB
FETCH next FROM DROPDB INTO @DBName
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0

BEGIN
    SET @SQL = 'DROP DATABASE ' + @DBName
    PRINT @SQL
    EXEC @SQL
    FETCH next FROM DROPDB INTO @DBName
END

CLOSE DROPDB
DEALLOCATE DROPDB

In my blog is more about this topic. www.pigeonsql.com