CREATE OR ALTER TABLE 因“关键字‘TABLE’附近的语法不正确”而失败

Question

I am trying to make few tables in the database.
& the tool I`m using is Azure Data Studio.

Command that I`m using it:-

CREATE OR ALTER TABLE TABLE_NAME
(
    Date         datetime,
    Sequence         nvarchar(8),
    Code     nvarchar(3),
)
    GO

Error that I am getting:-

What I wanted to do is, create a table if not exist or if it does exist then alter it. I`m unable to understand why its failing.

We already have something available on Stackover Flow itself Incorrect Syntax near the keyword 'OR' in CREATE OR ALTER PROCEDURE

We have create and alter for external tables here .

Why this isnt working?

Answer 1

I found out there is no CREATE OR ALTER syntax for tables. It works only for views, triggers, functions and stored procedures.

The corresponding MSSQL Tiger Team blog post explains the situation:-

CREATE OR ALTER can be used in programmability objects such as:

• STORED PROCEDURES (including natively compiled)
• FUNCTIONS (Transact-SQL, including natively compiled)
• TRIGGERS
• VIEWS

But cannot be used in: Objects that require storage (tables, indexes and indexed views)

• CLR user-defined functions
• Deprecated programmability objects (RULE and DEFAULT)
• Non-programmability objects (such as CREATE ASSEMBLY, CREATE TABLE or CREATE - SCHEMA). On these objects, the syntax for CREATE and ALTER is very different from a syntax and usability perspective.

Instead, we can create table if it doesn't exist (eg like here ) or explicitly drop it first:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS FOO;
CREATE TABLE FOO (...)

OR

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS FOO;
    GO
CREATE TABLE FOO (...)

Both will work fine.

I hope this will help the community.