Any way to "conditionally" drop a table?

This is probably a FAQ, but I haven't been able to find any good information about this. Perhaps that means the answer is that I can't do it, but I'll give it a try anyway.

In writing db setup scripts, it's convenient to add a "drop table" statement before "create table" statements. This works fine if the table already existed. If the table didn't exist, the script fails.

Is it practical/feasible to write Oracle-specific SQL that I can pass through JDBC that will only drop the table if it exists, and ignore it if it doesn't exist? I remember a colleague at another job doing this quite a while ago, but I can't remember how it was done. Received on Mon Oct 27 2003 - 16:39:54 CST