Changing the maximum length of a varchar column

Question

I m trying to update the length of a varchar column from 255 characters to 500 without losing the contents  I ve dropped and re-created tables before but I ve never been exposed to the alter statement which is what I believe I need to use to do this  I found the documentation here  ALTER TABLE  Transfact-SQL  however I can t make heads or tails of it   I have the following so far  essentially nothing unfortunately    alter table  progennet dev  PROGEN LE alter column UR VALUE 3   How do I approach this  Is there better documentation for this statement out there  I did some searches for an example statement but came up empty

User · Answer

Increasing column size with ALTER will not lose any data   alter table  progennet dev  PROGEN LE      alter column UR VALUE 3 varchar 500     As  Martin points out  remember to explicitly specify NULL   NOT NULL

User · Answer

As an alternative  you can save old data and create a new table with new parameters   In SQL Server Management Studio   quot your database quot    gt  task   gt  generatescripts   gt  select specific database object   gt   quot your table quot    gt  advanced   gt  types of data to script - schema and data   gt  generate Personally  I did so

User · Answer

For MariaDB  use modify column   ALTER TABLE table name MODIFY COLUMN column name VARCHAR  500     It will work

User · Answer

You need   ALTER TABLE YourTable ALTER COLUMN YourColumn  lt  lt new datatype gt  gt   NULL   NOT NULL    But remember to specify NOT NULL explicitly if desired    ALTER TABLE YourTable ALTER COLUMN YourColumn VARCHAR  500  NOT NULL    If you leave it unspecified as below     ALTER TABLE YourTable ALTER COLUMN YourColumn VARCHAR  500     Then the column will default to allowing nulls even if it was originally defined as NOT NULL  i e  omitting the specification in an ALTER TABLE     ALTER COLUMN is always treated as   ALTER TABLE YourTable ALTER COLUMN YourColumn VARCHAR  500  NULL    This behaviour is different from that used for new columns created with ALTER TABLE  or at CREATE TABLE time   There the default nullability depends on the ANSI NULL DFLT settings

User · Answer

You can use modify   ALTER TABLE  table name   modify COLUMN  column name  varchar  length

User · Answer

I was also having above doubt  what worked for me is    ALTER TABLE  your table  CHANGE  property   property   VARCHAR whatever you want  CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8 unicode ci NOT NULL

User · Answer

ALTER TABLE TABLE NAME MODIFY COLUMN NAME VARCHAR 40     Late to the question - but I am using Oracle SQL Developer and  anonymous s answer was the closest but kept receiving syntax errors until I edited the query to this   Hope this helps someone

User · Answer

This worked for me in db2   alter table  JOBS   alter column  JOB TITLE  set  data type varchar 30

User · Answer

In Oracle SQL Developer ALTER TABLE car details MODIFY torque VARCHAR 100

User · Answer

Using Maria-DB and DB-Navigator tool inside IntelliJ  MODIFY Column worked for me instead of Alter Column

[sql] Changing the maximum length of a varchar column?

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