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, w

Answer 1

Another method is to define an exception and then only catch that exception letting all others propagate.

Declare
   eTableDoesNotExist Exception;
   PRAGMA EXCEPTION_INIT(eTableDoesNotExist, -942);
Begin
   EXECUTE IMMEDIATE ('DROP TABLE myschema.mytable');
Exception
   When eTableDoesNotExist Then
      DBMS_Output.Put_Line('Table already does not exist.');
End;

Answer 2

You could always catch the error yourself.

begin
execute immediate 'drop table mytable';
exception when others then null;
end;

It is considered bad practice to overuse this, similar to empty catch()'es in other languages.

Regards
K

Answer 3

BEGIN
   EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'DROP TABLE "IMS"."MAX" ';
EXCEPTION
   WHEN OTHERS THEN
      IF SQLCODE != -942 THEN
         RAISE;
          END IF;
         EXECUTE IMMEDIATE ' 
  CREATE TABLE "IMS"."MAX" 
   (    "ID" NUMBER NOT NULL ENABLE, 
    "NAME" VARCHAR2(20 BYTE), 
     CONSTRAINT "MAX_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("ID")
  USING INDEX PCTFREE 10 INITRANS 2 MAXTRANS 255 
  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 NEXT 1048576 MINEXTENTS 1 MAXEXTENTS 2147483645
  PCTINCREASE 0 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT FLASH_CACHE DEFAULT CELL_FLASH_CACHE DEFAULT)
  TABLESPACE "SYSAUX"  ENABLE
   ) SEGMENT CREATION IMMEDIATE 
  PCTFREE 10 PCTUSED 40 INITRANS 1 MAXTRANS 255 NOCOMPRESS LOGGING
  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 NEXT 1048576 MINEXTENTS 1 MAXEXTENTS 2147483645
  PCTINCREASE 0 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT FLASH_CACHE DEFAULT CELL_FLASH_CACHE DEFAULT)
  TABLESPACE "SYSAUX"  ';


END;

// Doing this code, checks if the table exists and later it creates the table max. this simply works in single compilation