ORA-12983

If you try to drop all columns in a table, you get an ORA-12983 as you cannot have a table with no columns. You can see what I mean in the examples below, which I ran in an Oracle 11.2 database:

SQL> create table tab1

  2  (col1 number)

  3  /

 

Table created.

 

SQL> alter table tab1 drop column col1

  2  /

alter table tab1 drop column col1

*

ERROR at line 1:

ORA-12983: cannot drop all columns in a table

 

SQL> create table tab2

  2  (col1 number,

  3   col2 number)

  4  /

 

Table created.

 

SQL> alter table tab2 drop (col1, col2)

  2  /

alter table tab2 drop (col1, col2)

*

ERROR at line 1:

ORA-12983: cannot drop all columns in a table

 

SQL>