DROP USER

Enterprise command reference.

Command Snapshot

Field	Value
Category	Security and Access Control
Mutates Data	Yes/Depends
Scope	Cluster / Object
Privilege Model	Requires administrative privilege for role, user, and privilege management.

Purpose

Defines, changes, or removes schema and metadata objects.

Syntax

DROP USER [ IF EXISTS ] username;

Operational Notes

Use schema-qualified identifiers in automation and automation pipelines.
Validate behavior in staging for cluster-impacting or governance-impacting changes.
Confirm runtime effects through system tables and metrics before and after execution.

When to Use

Use to implement least-privilege access and role governance.
Use when onboarding users/roles or changing permission boundaries.

When Not to Use

Avoid broad wildcard grants/denials without impact review and audit traceability.

Common Errors and Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely Cause	Action
Permission denied / unauthorized	Missing privilege on object or cluster scope	Re-run with required grants or elevated admin role.
Analysis/parse error	Syntax variant or object shape mismatch	Compare with canonical syntax and object definition.
Runtime failure under load	Resource limits, breaker pressure, or node state transitions	Check `sys.jobs`, `sys.operations`, `sys.checks`, and retry after mitigation.

Cross-References

Detailed Reference

SQL Statement

DROP USER [ IF EXISTS ] username;

Description

The DROP USER statement in MonkDB is used to remove an existing database user or role. Its syntax and functionality are identical to the DROP ROLE statement in MonkDB.

Parameters

IF EXISTS: This clause prevents the statement from failing if the specified user does not exist. Instead, it returns a warning for each non-existent user.
username: The unique name of the database user or role to be removed. The name must follow SQL identifier principles.

Usage Notes

Role Dependencies: If a role is granted to other roles or users, it cannot be dropped until these grants are revoked.
Permissions: The user executing this command must have appropriate permissions to manage users or roles in the database.
Effect on Sessions: Dropping a user does not automatically close any open sessions. The user is effectively dropped after their session is closed.

Examples

To drop a user named exampleuser, you would use:

DROP USER exampleuser;

If you want to avoid errors when dropping a user that might not exist, use the IF EXISTS clause:

DROP USER IF EXISTS exampleuser;

Additional Considerations

Security Context: Dropping a user does not automatically invalidate or drop databases or objects created by that user. You may need to manually manage these resources after dropping the user.
Scripting: The IF EXISTS clause is particularly useful in scripts to prevent errors when attempting to drop non-existent users.