Funny “ORA-00942: table or view does not exist” Error Message

Dear all,

We all know when “ORA-00942” error message is returned. For instance, if I try to query a non-existent table then Oracle joyfully returns this errors message.

  
SQL> select * from funny;
select * from funny
              *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00942: table or view does not exist

“ORA-00942” error message is thrown on our face whenever we try to perform any action like CREATE, ALTER, DROP, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE ... against a non-existent table. But this error is sometimes misleading, like the one below:

  
SQL> create table t(a number);

Table created.

SQL> create view v as select * from t;

View created.

SQL> drop table v;
drop table v
           *
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00942: table or view does not exist

Error message reports “table or view does not exist”, but definitely a view named “V” exists in the same schema.

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Oracle reports “table does not exist”?