In my knowledge there are two different ways to check if a table in
MySQL/Oracle database already exists:

In Oracle
select count(table_name) from all_tables where table_name = 'TABLE'

In MySQL
show tables like 'TABLE'

Is there any common way for this, which can work with both the
databases?


I would use

DESCRIBE tablename

which is provided in MySQL to provide Oracle compatability; if you get a good result back, the table exists.   If your SQL request fails, it doesn't exist.   With modules like the Perl DBI, you simply check the return from the request to see if it's a true value.

This is bad practice as you are treating a failure as a desired result, a failure may occur for other reasons.

Try using "SHOW TABLES" instead, it will not fall over but you do have to search through the results for the table concerned.

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