DROP WORKSPACE

The DROP WORKSPACE statement permanently deletes a workspace and everything in it — every materialized view, dataset, view, and collection, their storage, and the access grants issued on the workspace — then the workspace itself.

There is no grace period and no restore. Nothing is left in the catalog or on disk after it returns.

Syntax

sql

DROP WORKSPACE [ IF EXISTS ] <workspace>;

<workspace> — a workspace name, never a qualified (dotted) name. This statement names a workspace, not anything inside one.
IF EXISTS — skip without error if the workspace does not exist, instead of refusing the statement.

sql

DROP WORKSPACE staging;

Deletion Protection

Workspaces are created with deletion_protection on, and DROP WORKSPACE refuses while it is on. Turning it off first is the deliberate signal of intent:

sql

ALTER WORKSPACE staging SET deletion_protection TO OFF;
DROP WORKSPACE staging;

See ALTER WORKSPACE.

Who May Drop

Requires the owner role on the whole workspace — a pattern matching the workspace itself, such as staging.*. Owning part of it (staging.reports.*) is not enough. See Security & Permissions.

What Happens, In Order

Materialized views are dropped first — workspace-wide, before any plain dataset — so no view in the workspace can still be holding a source dataset when that dataset's turn comes. Then every dataset and view, then the now-empty collections, with each dataset's storage reclaimed inline. The workspace's access grants are removed, and finally the workspace record itself.

Two things stop it, correctly, partway:

A materialized view in another workspace that reads a dataset here. That is a real external dependency this statement cannot override — drop or redefine that view first.
A locked dataset. Clear the lock and re-run.

Externally-Bound Workspaces

A workspace bound to an external catalog is unlinked, not destroyed: its datasets are someone else's, so nothing is dropped, no storage is reclaimed, and the external catalog is never touched. Only the binding goes.

Notes

DROP WORKSPACE never cascades across workspaces — only its own contents are dropped.
A running session that could see the workspace keeps failing normally on the next statement against it; the name is gone from the catalog immediately.