CONCEPT Cited by 1 source

MySQL TEMPORARY keyword in DROP TABLE

MySQL's DROP TABLE supports a TEMPORARY keyword that scopes the drop to a temporary table only. Postgres does not. The absence makes a regular-table drop under the same name a real foot-gun in Postgres.

MySQL

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE snapshot (...);  -- session-local
-- ... work ...
DROP TEMPORARY TABLE snapshot;  -- drops only the temp, leaves any same-named regular table alone

Postgres

CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE snapshot (...);  -- session-local
-- ... work ...
DROP TABLE snapshot;  -- drops the temp if it exists; otherwise drops the regular `snapshot` table

The PlanetScale post spells out the hazard:

In Postgres, this omission requires you to be more careful with your naming convention because a temporary table may have the same name as a regular table. And since you can't specify TEMPORARY in your DROP TABLE statement, you might unintentionally delete important tables.

— sources/2026-04-21-planetscale-migrating-from-postgres-to-mysql

Migration implication

In a MySQL → Postgres migration, any code path that used DROP TEMPORARY TABLE foo has to be audited: if a regular foo could ever coexist in the schema, the Postgres DROP TABLE foo will hit the wrong target. The usual fix is naming convention — prefix temporary tables with tmp_ or similar, or use Postgres's schema-qualified pg_temp namespace explicitly.

In the other direction (Postgres → MySQL), the MySQL TEMPORARY keyword becomes available as a tightening mechanism — teams migrating in can prefer DROP TEMPORARY TABLE over unqualified DROP TABLE once on MySQL.

Related

• systems/mysql, systems/postgresql
• patterns/cross-engine-database-migration-audit