Oracle: If Table Exists

Question

I'm writing some migration scripts for an Oracle database, and was hoping Oracle had something similar to MySQL's IF EXISTS construct.

Specifically, whenever I want to drop a table in MySQL, I do something like

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `table_name`;

This way, if the table doesn't exist, the DROP doesn't produce an error, and the script can continue.

Does Oracle have a similar mechanism? I realize I could use the following query to check if a table exists or not

SELECT * FROM dba_tables where table_name = 'table_name';

but the syntax for tying that together with a DROP is escaping me.

Answer 1

I prefer following economic solution

BEGIN
    FOR i IN (SELECT NULL FROM USER_OBJECTS WHERE OBJECT_TYPE = 'TABLE' AND OBJECT_NAME = 'TABLE_NAME') LOOP
            EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE TABLE_NAME';
    END LOOP;
END;

Answer 2

A block like this could be useful to you.

DECLARE
    table_exist INT;

BEGIN
    SELECT Count(*)
    INTO   table_exist
    FROM   dba_tables
    WHERE  owner = 'SCHEMA_NAME' 
    AND table_name = 'EMPLOYEE_TABLE';

    IF table_exist = 1 THEN
      EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'drop table EMPLOYEE_TABLE';
    END IF;
END;  

Answer 3

One way is to use DBMS_ASSERT.SQL_OBJECT_NAME :

This function verifies that the input parameter string is a qualified SQL identifier of an existing SQL object.

DECLARE
    V_OBJECT_NAME VARCHAR2(30);
BEGIN
   BEGIN
        V_OBJECT_NAME  := DBMS_ASSERT.SQL_OBJECT_NAME('tab1');
        EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE tab1';

        EXCEPTION WHEN OTHERS THEN NULL;
   END;
END;
/

DBFiddle Demo