Deleting a set of databases with similar names with T-SQL

Devops Sunday. If you end up having many databases in SQL Server and want to get rid of them by matching their names, this T-SQL should help you out.

use master
go
declare @tablestoNuke as table(db nvarchar(100))
insert into @tablestoNuke
select name from sys.databases  
where name like '%SomeSimilarDbNameSet%'
declare @nukedb as nvarchar(100)
declare @nukesql as nvarchar(150)

declare nuker cursor for
select db from @tablestoNuke

open nuker
fetch next from nuker into @nukedb

while @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 
begin
set @nukesql = 'drop database ' + @nukedb
exec sp_executesql @nukesql
fetch next from nuker into @nukedb
end

close nuker
deallocate nuker

print 'All done nuking'

The T-SQL uses a cursor to loop through the database names fetched from sys.databases view on master db and then uses exec sp_executesql to delete the databases, by dropping them.

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