DROP PROCEDURE(7) PostgreSQL 15.7 Documentation DROP PROCEDURE(7)
NAME
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, or VARIADIC. If omitted,
the default is IN (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 PostgreSQL
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.
SEE ALSO
CREATE PROCEDURE (CREATE_PROCEDURE(7)), ALTER PROCEDURE
(ALTER_PROCEDURE(7)), DROP FUNCTION (DROP_FUNCTION(7)), DROP ROUTINE
(DROP_ROUTINE(7))
PostgreSQL 15.7 2024 DROP PROCEDURE(7)
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