DROP RULE (Transact-SQL)

Removes one or more user-defined rules from the current database.

Important

DROP RULE will be removed in the next version of Microsoft SQL Server. Do not use DROP RULE in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use them. Instead, use CHECK constraints that you can create by using the CHECK keyword of CREATE TABLE or ALTER TABLE. For more information, see CHECK Constraints

Topic link iconTransact-SQL Syntax Conventions

Syntax

DROP RULE { [ schema_name . ] rule_name } [ ,...n ] [ ; ]

Arguments

  • schema_name
    Is the name of the schema to which the rule belongs.

  • rule
    Is the rule to be removed. Rule names must comply with the rules for identifiers. For more information about rules for identifiers, see Using Identifiers As Object Names. Specifying the rule schema name is optional.

Remarks

To drop a rule, first unbind it if the rule is currently bound to a column or to an alias data type. To unbind the rule, use sp_unbindrule. If the rule is bound when you try to drop it, an error message is displayed and the DROP RULE statement is canceled.

After a rule is dropped, new data entered into the columns previously governed by the rule is entered without the constraints of the rule. Existing data is not affected in any way.

The DROP RULE statement does not apply to CHECK constraints. For more information about dropping CHECK constraints, see ALTER TABLE (Transact-SQL).

Permissions

To execute DROP RULE, at a minimum, a user must have ALTER permission on the schema to which the rule belongs.

Examples

The following example unbinds and then drops the rule named VendorID_rule.

USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
IF OBJECT_ID (N'VendorID_rule', N'R') IS NOT NULL
   BEGIN
      EXEC sp_unbindrule 'Production.ProductVendor.BusinessEntityID';
      DROP RULE VendorID_rule;
   END;
GO