DROP PROCEDURE
DROP PROCEDURE — remove a procedure
Synopsis
DROP PROCEDURE [ IF EXISTS ]name
[ ( [ [argmode
] [argname
]argtype
[, ...] ] ) ] [, ...] [ CASCADE | RESTRICT ]
Description
DROP PROCEDURE
removes the definition of one or more existing procedures. To execute this command the user must be the owner of the procedure(s). The argument types to the procedure(s) usually must be specified, since several different procedures can exist with the same name and different argument lists.
Parameters
IF EXISTS
Do not throw an error if the procedure does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.
name
The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing procedure.
argmode
The mode of an argument:
IN
,OUT
,INOUT
, orVARIADIC
. If omitted, the default isIN
(but see below).argname
The name of an argument. Note that
DROP PROCEDURE
does not actually pay any attention to argument names, since only the argument data types are used to determine the procedure's identity.argtype
The data type(s) of the procedure's arguments (optionally schema-qualified), if any. See below for details.
CASCADE
Automatically drop objects that depend on the procedure, and in turn all objects that depend on those objects (see Section 5.14).
RESTRICT
Refuse to drop the procedure if any objects depend on it. This is the default.
Notes
If there is only one procedure of the given name, the argument list can be omitted. Omit the parentheses too in this case.
In PostgreSQL, it's sufficient to list the input (including INOUT
) arguments, because no two routines of the same name are allowed to share the same input-argument list. Moreover, the DROP
command will not actually check that you wrote the types of OUT
arguments correctly; so any arguments that are explicitly marked OUT
are just noise. But writing them is recommendable for consistency with the corresponding CREATE
command.
For compatibility with the SQL standard, it is also allowed to write all the argument data types (including those of OUT
arguments) without any argmode
markers. When this is done, the types of the procedure's OUT
argument(s) will be verified against the command. This provision creates an ambiguity, in that when the argument list contains no argmode
markers, it's unclear which rule is intended. The DROP
command will attempt the lookup both ways, and will throw an error if two different procedures are found. To avoid the risk of such ambiguity, it's recommendable to write IN
markers explicitly rather than letting them be defaulted, thus forcing the traditional PostgreSQL interpretation to be used.
The lookup rules just explained are also used by other commands that act on existing procedures, such as ALTER PROCEDURE
and COMMENT ON PROCEDURE
.
Examples
If there is only one procedure do_db_maintenance
, this command is sufficient to drop it:
DROP PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance;
Given this procedure definition:
CREATE PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(IN target_schema text, OUT results text) ...
any one of these commands would work to drop it:
DROP PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(IN target_schema text, OUT results text); DROP PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(IN text, OUT text); DROP PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(IN text); DROP PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(text); DROP PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(text, text); -- potentially ambiguous
However, the last example would be ambiguous if there is also, say,
CREATE PROCEDURE do_db_maintenance(IN target_schema text, IN options text) ...
Compatibility
This command conforms to the SQL standard, with these Postgres Pro extensions:
The standard only allows one procedure to be dropped per command.
The
IF EXISTS
option is an extension.The ability to specify argument modes and names is an extension, and the lookup rules differ when modes are given.