Deletes one or more partitions from a partitioned table.

The table in which partitions are to be deleted must exist. Otherwise, an error is reported.
The to-be-deleted partition must exist. Otherwise, an error is reported. To avoid this error, add IF EXISTS in this statement.

ALTER TABLE [db_name.]table_name
  DROP [IF EXISTS]
  PARTITION partition_spec1[,PARTITION partition_spec2,...];

DROP: deletes a partition.
IF EXISTS: The partition to be deleted must exist. Otherwise, an error is reported.
PARTITION: specifies the partition to be deleted

**Table 1** Parameter description
Parameter	Description
db_name	Database name that contains letters, digits, and underscores (_). It cannot contain only digits and cannot start with an underscore (_).
table_name	Table name of a database that contains letters, digits, and underscores (_). It cannot contain only digits and cannot start with an underscore (_). The matching rule is *^(?!_)(?![0-9]+$)[A-Za-z0-9_$]$**. If special characters are required, use single quotation marks ('') to enclose them.
partition_specs	Partition information, in the format of "key=value", where key indicates the partition field and value indicates the partition value. In a table partitioned using multiple fields, if you specify all the fields of a partition name, only the partition is deleted; if you specify only some fields of a partition name, all matching partitions will be deleted. By default, the partition_specs parameter contains (). For example: PARTITION (dt='2009-09-09',city='xxx')

To delete the dt = '2008-08-08', city = 'xxx' partition in the student table, run the following statement:

ALTER TABLE student
  DROP
  PARTITION (dt = '2008-08-08', city = 'xxx');

Deleting a Partition