drop-role-transact-sql.md

title	DROP ROLE (Transact-SQL)
description	DROP ROLE (Transact-SQL)
author	VanMSFT
ms.author	vanto
ms.date	05/11/2017
ms.service	sql
ms.subservice	t-sql
ms.topic	reference
ms.custom	ignite-2024
f1_keywords	DROP ROLE DROP_ROLE_TSQL
helpviewer_keywords	deleting roles database roles [SQL Server], removing removing roles DROP ROLE statement roles [SQL Server], removing dropping roles
dev_langs	TSQL
monikerRange	>=aps-pdw-2016 || =azure-sqldw-latest || >=sql-server-2016 || >=sql-server-linux-2017 || =azuresqldb-mi-current

DROP ROLE (Transact-SQL)

[!INCLUDE sql-asdbmi-asa-pdw-fabricsqldb]

Removes a role from the database.

:::image type="icon" source="../../includes/media/topic-link-icon.svg" border="false"::: Transact-SQL syntax conventions

Syntax

Syntax for SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and Fabric SQL database

DROP ROLE [ IF EXISTS ] role_name

Syntax for Azure Synapse Analytics and Parallel Data Warehouse

DROP ROLE role_name

Arguments

IF EXISTS
Applies to: [!INCLUDEssNoVersion] ( [!INCLUDEsssql16-md] through current version).

Conditionally drops the role only if it already exists.

role_name
Specifies the role to be dropped from the database.

Remarks

Roles that own securables cannot be dropped from the database. To drop a database role that owns securables, you must first transfer ownership of those securables or drop them from the database. Roles that have members cannot be dropped from the database. To drop a role that has members, you must first remove members of the role.

To remove members from a database role, use ALTER ROLE (Transact-SQL).

You cannot use DROP ROLE to drop a fixed database role.

Information about role membership can be viewed in the sys.database_role_members catalog view.

Note

[!INCLUDEssCautionUserSchema]

To remove a server role, use DROP SERVER ROLE (Transact-SQL).

Permissions

Requires ALTER ANY ROLE permission on the database, or CONTROL permission on the role, or membership in the db_securityadmin.

Examples

The following example drops the database role purchasing from the [!INCLUDE sssampledbobject-md] database.

DROP ROLE purchasing;  
GO  

See Also

CREATE ROLE (Transact-SQL)
ALTER ROLE (Transact-SQL)
Principals (Database Engine)
EVENTDATA (Transact-SQL)
sp_addrolemember (Transact-SQL)
sys.database_role_members (Transact-SQL)
sys.database_principals (Transact-SQL)
Security Functions (Transact-SQL)