Re: Wherefore art thee: "Drop Column"?
Date: 1996/02/02
Message-ID: <4es1d0$jmh_at_news.magi.com>#1/1
sharman_at_dsr.com (Lane Sharman) wrote:
>Is it really true that Oracle 7.1.3 does not support the drop column
>function within the alter table.
>If not is there a work-around?
Oracle has never supported this feature. The quickest workaround (not my favorite) is to create a view with column aliases using the new column name instead of the old. The only other solution is to CREATE a new table AS SELECT column list from old. This does not work for any table with a LONG column. As well, it does not bring over indexes, grants, or referential integrity.
In Tuning Oracle (Corey, Abbey, Dechichio) on page 252 there is a section on this topic. Note the method we suggest does not carry over constraints (referential integrity). However if you built an SQL script to build these constraints, the method we use would be sound.
Michael Abbey Received on Fri Feb 02 1996 - 00:00:00 CET