Re: dropping a column in a production database
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2008 07:42:31 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <744e53c6-07ea-4432-89cf-6c7d8f889691@p25g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 2, 8:38 am, yossarian <yossaria..._at_operamail.com> wrote:
> Ed Prochak wrote:
> > It is safe in the sense that it will do exactly what you ask. Any data
> > in that dropped column will be gone (forever if you do not have it in
> > a backup). Note that any applications that used that column will need
> > to be rewritten. Packages, functions and procedures dependent on that
> > column will become invalid and need to be rewritten. It's all standard
> > stuff.
>
> OK, thank you. I was just wondering about unexpected side effects.
>
> Kind regards, Y.
As Ed said, just standard stuff. As long as you modify any code that uses the column to no longer reference it prior to the drop column operation you should be fine. If the table is large the drop may take a while but since the second version after the feature was introduced Oracle auto-commits the change however the 10g SQL manual says the default is now 512 so you might want to change the commit frequency.
HTH -- Mark D Powell -- Received on Wed Jul 02 2008 - 09:42:31 CDT