Drop external table in Azure Managed Instance

• Luis Cazares

  SSC Guru

  Points: 183706

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  April 28, 2022 at 8:34 pm

  #4023899

  We moved a database from on-prem to Azure Managed Instance. But now we can't use External Tables, so we're taking a different approach. Is there a way to drop the external tables so I can use the object names for local tables?

  If I run the normal instruction

  DROP EXTERNAL TABLE [dbo].[MyExternalTable];

  It shows the error

  Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 1

  Incorrect syntax near 'EXTERNAL'.

  If I run the command to drop like a normal table, I get a different error mentioning that this is an external table.

  DROP TABLE [dbo].[MyExternalTable];

  It shows the error

  Msg 3705, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

  Cannot use DROP TABLE with 'dbo.MyExternalTable' because 'dbo.MyExternalTable' is a EXTERNAL TABLE. Use DROP EXTERNAL TABLE.

  Is there any way around this?

  Luis C.
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• Site Owners

  SSC Guru

  Points: 80381

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  April 29, 2022 at 9:10 pm

  #4024441

  Thanks for posting your issue and hopefully someone will answer soon.

  This is an automated bump to increase visibility of your question.