Why do you think a 'DROP VIEW' should drop a table? Clearly, there could not have been a view of that name. If you want no table or view of that name to exist, you'll need to do 2 'drop if exist' ops. One will succeed, the other maybe not. A small price to pay for uncertainty or confusion as to what might be present already. The "IF EXISTS" option is just a convenience, and so is that error message.