JAVA DATABASE PROGRAMMING - Introduction to Java Programming: Comprehensive Version - page 1182

If a table is no longer needed, it can be dropped permanently using the drop table com-
mand. For example, the following statement drops the Course table:

drop table Course; drop table

If a table to be dropped is referenced by other tables, you have to drop the other tables
first. For example, if you have created the tables Course , Student , and Enrollment and
want to drop Course , you have to first drop Enrollment , because Course is referenced by
Enrollment .
Figure 32.10 shows how to enter the create table statement from the MySQL console.

F IGURE 32.10

A table is created using the create table statement.

If you make typing errors, you have to retype the whole command. To avoid retyping, you
can save the command in a file, and then run the command from the file. To do so, create a
text file to contain commands, named, for example, test.sql . You can create the text file using
any text editor, such as Notepad, as shown in Figure 32.11a. To comment a line, precede it
with two dashes. You can now run the script file by typing source test.sql from the SQL
command prompt, as shown in Figure 32.11b.

(a) (b)

F IGURE 32.11

(a) You can use Notepad to create a text file for SQL commands. (b) You
can run the SQL commands in a script file from MySQL.

32.3.4 Simple Insert, Update, and Delete
Once a table is created, you can insert data into it. You can also update and delete records.
This section introduces simple insert, update, and delete statements.
The syntax to insert a record into a table is:

insert into tableName [(column1, column2, ..., column)]
values (value1, value2, ..., valuen);