man > DROP_PROCEDURE(7)

DROP PROCEDURE(7)                  PostgreSQL 14.23 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 14.23                                2026                               DROP PROCEDURE(7)