Alterations that modify only table metadata and not table data can be made immediately by altering the table's .frm file and not touching table contents. The following changes are fast alterations that can be made this way:

In some cases, an operation such as changing a VARCHAR(10) column to VARCHAR(15) may be immediate, but this depends on the storage engine for the table. A change such as VARCHAR(10) to a length greater than 255 is not immediate because data values must be modified from using one byte to store the length to using two bytes.

If you use ALTER TABLE tbl_name RENAME TO new_tbl_name without any other options, MySQL simply renames any files that correspond to the table tbl_name. (You can also use the RENAME TABLE statement to rename tables. See Section 12.1.19, “RENAME TABLE Syntax”.) Any privileges granted specifically for the renamed table are not migrated to the new name. They must be changed manually.

ALTER TABLE ... ADD PARTITION creates no temporary table except for MySQL Cluster. ADD or DROP operations for RANGE or LIST partitions are immediate operations or nearly so. ADD or COALESCE operations for HASH or KEY partitions copy data between changed partitions; unless LINEAR HASH or LINEAR KEY was used, this is much the same as creating a new table (although the operation is done partition by partition). REORGANIZE operations copy only changed partitions and do not touch unchanged ones.

To use ALTER TABLE, you need ALTER, INSERT, and CREATE privileges for the table.

The ONLINE keyword can be used to perform online ADD COLUMN, ADD INDEX, and DROP INDEX operations on NDB tables, as well as online renaming of tables and columns. Online renaming operations (but not online adding or dropping of columns or indexes) are also supported for MyISAM tables. Online operations are non-copying; that is, they do not require that indexes be re-created, and they do not lock the table being changed. Such operations do not require single user mode for NDB table alterations made in a cluster with multiple API nodes; transactions can continue uninterrupted during online DDL operations.

Limitations.  Online ALTER TABLE operations that add columns or that add or drop indexes are subject to the following limitations:

The KEY, CONSTRAINT, and IGNORE keywords are supported in ALTER TABLE statements using the ONLINE keyword.

The ONLINE keyword was added in MySQL Cluster NDB 6.2.5 and MySQL Cluster NDB 6.3.2.

IGNORE is a MySQL extension to standard SQL. It controls how ALTER TABLE works if there are duplicates on unique keys in the new table or if warnings occur when strict mode is enabled. If IGNORE is not specified, the copy is aborted and rolled back if duplicate-key errors occur. If IGNORE is specified, only the first row is used of rows with duplicates on a unique key, The other conflicting rows are deleted. Incorrect values are truncated to the closest matching acceptable value.

table_option signifies a table option of the kind that can be used in the CREATE TABLE statement, such as ENGINE, AUTO_INCREMENT, or AVG_ROW_LENGTH. (Section 12.1.10, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”, lists all table options.) However, ALTER TABLE ignores the DATA DIRECTORY and INDEX DIRECTORY table options.

For example, to convert a table to be an InnoDB table, use this statement:

ALTER TABLE t1 ENGINE = InnoDB;

The outcome of attempting to change a table's storage engine is affected by whether the desired storage engine is available and the setting of the NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION SQL mode, as described in Section 5.1.7, “SQL Modes”.

As of MySQL 5.1.11, to prevent inadvertent loss of data, ALTER TABLE cannot be used to change the storage engine of a table to MERGE or BLACKHOLE.

To change the value of the AUTO_INCREMENT counter to be used for new rows, do this:

ALTER TABLE t2 AUTO_INCREMENT = value;

You cannot reset the counter to a value less than or equal to any that have already been used. For MyISAM, if the value is less than or equal to the maximum value currently in the AUTO_INCREMENT column, the value is reset to the current maximum plus one. For InnoDB, if the value is less than the current maximum value in the column, no error occurs and the current sequence value is not changed.

You can issue multiple ADD, ALTER, DROP, and CHANGE clauses in a single ALTER TABLE statement, separated by commas. This is a MySQL extension to standard SQL, which allows only one of each clause per ALTER TABLE statement. For example, to drop multiple columns in a single statement, do this:

ALTER TABLE t2 DROP COLUMN c, DROP COLUMN d;

CHANGE col_name, DROP col_name, and DROP INDEX are MySQL extensions to standard SQL.

MODIFY is an Oracle extension to ALTER TABLE.

The word COLUMN is optional and can be omitted.

column_definition clauses use the same syntax for ADD and CHANGE as for CREATE TABLE. See Section 12.1.10, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”.

You can rename a column using a CHANGE old_col_name new_col_name column_definition clause. To do so, specify the old and new column names and the definition that the column currently has. For example, to rename an INTEGER column from a to b, you can do this:

ALTER TABLE t1 CHANGE a b INTEGER;

If you want to change a column's type but not the name, CHANGE syntax still requires an old and new column name, even if they are the same. For example:

ALTER TABLE t1 CHANGE b b BIGINT NOT NULL;

You can also use MODIFY to change a column's type without renaming it:

ALTER TABLE t1 MODIFY b BIGINT NOT NULL;

If you use CHANGE or MODIFY to shorten a column for which an index exists on the column, and the resulting column length is less than the index length, MySQL shortens the index automatically.

When you change a data type using CHANGE or MODIFY, MySQL tries to convert existing column values to the new type as well as possible.

To add a column at a specific position within a table row, use FIRST or AFTER col_name. The default is to add the column last. You can also use FIRST and AFTER in CHANGE or MODIFY operations to reorder columns within a table.

ALTER ... SET DEFAULT or ALTER ... DROP DEFAULT specify a new default value for a column or remove the old default value, respectively. If the old default is removed and the column can be NULL, the new default is NULL. If the column cannot be NULL, MySQL assigns a default value as described in Section 10.1.4, “Data Type Default Values”.

DROP INDEX removes an index. This is a MySQL extension to standard SQL. See Section 12.1.13, “DROP INDEX Syntax”. If you are unsure of the index name, use SHOW INDEX FROM tbl_name.

If columns are dropped from a table, the columns are also removed from any index of which they are a part. If all columns that make up an index are dropped, the index is dropped as well.

If a table contains only one column, the column cannot be dropped. If what you intend is to remove the table, use DROP TABLE instead.

DROP PRIMARY KEY drops the primary key. If there is no primary key, an error occurs.

If you add a UNIQUE INDEX or PRIMARY KEY to a table, it is stored before any non-unique index so that MySQL can detect duplicate keys as early as possible.

Some storage engines allow you to specify an index type when creating an index. The syntax for the index_type specifier is USING type_name. For details about USING, see Section 12.1.7, “CREATE INDEX Syntax”. Before MySQL 5.1.10, USING can be given only before the index column list. As of 5.1.10, the preferred position is after the column list. Use of the option before the column list will no longer be recognized as of MySQL 5.3.

index_option values specify additional options for an index. USING is one such option. For details about allowable index_option values, see Section 12.1.7, “CREATE INDEX Syntax”.

After an ALTER TABLE statement, it may be necessary to run ANALYZE TABLE to update index cardinality information. See Section 12.5.4.18, “SHOW INDEX Syntax”.

ORDER BY enables you to create the new table with the rows in a specific order. Note that the table does not remain in this order after inserts and deletes. This option is useful primarily when you know that you are mostly to query the rows in a certain order most of the time. By using this option after major changes to the table, you might be able to get higher performance. In some cases, it might make sorting easier for MySQL if the table is in order by the column that you want to order it by later.

ORDER BY syntax allows for one or more column names to be specified for sorting, each of which optionally can be followed by ASC or DESC to indicate ascending or descending sort order, respectively. The default is ascending order. Only column names are allowed as sort criteria; arbitrary expressions are not allowed.

ORDER BY does not make sense for InnoDB tables that contain a user-defined clustered index (PRIMARY KEY or NOT NULL UNIQUE index). InnoDB always orders table rows according to such an index if one is present.

If you use ALTER TABLE on a MyISAM table, all non-unique indexes are created in a separate batch (as for REPAIR TABLE). This should make ALTER TABLE much faster when you have many indexes.

This feature can be activated explicitly for a MyISAM table. ALTER TABLE ... DISABLE KEYS tells MySQL to stop updating non-unique indexes. ALTER TABLE ... ENABLE KEYS then should be used to re-create missing indexes. MySQL does this with a special algorithm that is much faster than inserting keys one by one, so disabling keys before performing bulk insert operations should give a considerable speedup. Using ALTER TABLE ... DISABLE KEYS requires the INDEX privilege in addition to the privileges mentioned earlier.

While the non-unique indexes are disabled, they are ignored for statements such as SELECT and EXPLAIN that otherwise would use them.

ENABLE KEYS and DISABLE KEYS were not supported for partitioned tables prior to MySQL 5.1.11.

If ALTER TABLE for an InnoDB table results in changes to column values (for example, because a column is truncated), InnoDB's FOREIGN KEY constraint checks do not notice possible violations caused by changing the values.

The FOREIGN KEY and REFERENCES clauses are supported by the InnoDB storage engine, which implements ADD [CONSTRAINT [symbol]] FOREIGN KEY (...) REFERENCES ... (...). See Section 13.5.6.4, “FOREIGN KEY Constraints”. For other storage engines, the clauses are parsed but ignored. The CHECK clause is parsed but ignored by all storage engines. See Section 12.1.10, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”. The reason for accepting but ignoring syntax clauses is for compatibility, to make it easier to port code from other SQL servers, and to run applications that create tables with references. See Section 1.8.5, “MySQL Differences from Standard SQL”.

InnoDB supports the use of ALTER TABLE to drop foreign keys:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name DROP FOREIGN KEY fk_symbol;

For more information, see Section 13.5.6.4, “FOREIGN KEY Constraints”.

You cannot add a foreign key and drop a foreign key in separate clauses of a single ALTER TABLE statement. You must use separate statements.

For an InnoDB table that is created with its own tablespace in an .ibd file, that file can be discarded and imported. To discard the .ibd file, use this statement:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name DISCARD TABLESPACE;

This deletes the current .ibd file, so be sure that you have a backup first. Attempting to access the table while the tablespace file is discarded results in an error.

To import the backup .ibd file back into the table, copy it into the database directory, and then issue this statement:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name IMPORT TABLESPACE;

See Section 13.5.3.1, “Using Per-Table Tablespaces”.

Pending INSERT DELAYED statements are lost if a table is write locked and ALTER TABLE is used to modify the table structure.

If you want to change the table default character set and all character columns (CHAR, VARCHAR, TEXT) to a new character set, use a statement like this:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET charset_name;

For a column that has a data type of VARCHAR or one of the TEXT types, CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET will change the data type as necessary to ensure that the new column is long enough to store as many characters as the original column. For example, a TEXT column has two length bytes, which store the byte-length of values in the column, up to a maximum of 65,535. For a latin1 TEXT column, each character requires a single byte, so the column can store up to 65,535 characters. If the column is converted to utf8, each character might require up to three bytes, for a maximum possible length of 3 × 65,535 = 196,605 bytes. That length will not fit in a TEXT column's length bytes, so MySQL will convert the data type to MEDIUMTEXT, which is the smallest string type for which the length bytes can record a value of 196,605. Similarly, a VARCHAR column might be converted to MEDIUMTEXT.

To avoid data type changes of the type just described, do not use CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET. Instead, use MODIFY to change individual columns. For example:

ALTER TABLE t MODIFY latin1_text_col TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8;
ALTER TABLE t MODIFY latin1_varchar_col VARCHAR(M) CHARACTER SET utf8;

If you specify CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET binary, the CHAR, VARCHAR, and TEXT columns are converted to their corresponding binary string types (BINARY, VARBINARY, BLOB). This means that the columns no longer will have a character set and a subsequent CONVERT TO operation will not apply to them.

If charset_name is DEFAULT, the database character set is used.

ALTER TABLE t1 CHANGE c1 c1 BLOB;
ALTER TABLE t1 CHANGE c1 c1 TEXT CHARACTER SET utf8;

To change only the default character set for a table, use this statement:

ALTER TABLE tbl_name DEFAULT CHARACTER SET charset_name;

The word DEFAULT is optional. The default character set is the character set that is used if you do not specify the character set for columns that you add to a table later (for example, with ALTER TABLE ... ADD column).

A number of partitioning-related extensions to ALTER TABLE were added in MySQL 5.1.5. These can be used with partitioned tables for repartitioning, for adding, dropping, merging, and splitting partitions, and for performing partitioning maintenance.

Simply using a partition_options clause with ALTER TABLE on a partitioned table repartitions the table according to the partitioning scheme defined by the partition_options. This clause always begins with PARTITION BY, and follows the same syntax and other rules as apply to the partition_options clause for CREATE TABLE (see Section 12.1.10, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”, for more detailed information), and can also be used to partition an existing table that is not already partitioned. For example, consider a (non-partitioned) table defined as shown here:

CREATE TABLE t1 (
    id INT,
    year_col INT
);

This table can be partitioned by HASH, using the id column as the partitioning key, into 8 partitions by means of this statement:

ALTER TABLE t1
    PARTITION BY HASH(id)
    PARTITIONS 8;

The table that results from using an ALTER TABLE ... PARTITION BY statement must follow the same rules as one created using CREATE TABLE ... PARTITION BY. This includes the rules governing the relationship between any unique keys (including any primary key) that the table might have, and the column or columns used in the partitioning expression, as discussed in Section 20.5.1, “Partitioning Keys, Primary Keys, and Unique Keys”. The CREATE TABLE ... PARTITION BY rules for specifying the number of partitions also apply to ALTER TABLE ... PARTITION BY.

ALTER TABLE ... PARTITION BY became available in MySQL 5.1.6.

The partition_definition clause for ALTER TABLE ADD PARTITION supports the same options as the clause of the same name for the CREATE TABLE statement. (See Section 12.1.10, “CREATE TABLE Syntax”, for the syntax and description.) Suppose that you have the partitioned table created as shown here:

CREATE TABLE t1 (
    id INT,
    year_col INT
)
PARTITION BY RANGE (year_col) (
    PARTITION p0 VALUES LESS THAN (1991),
    PARTITION p1 VALUES LESS THAN (1995),
    PARTITION p2 VALUES LESS THAN (1999)
);

You can add a new partition p3 to this table for storing values less than 2002 as follows:

ALTER TABLE t1 ADD PARTITION (PARTITION p3 VALUES LESS THAN (2002));

DROP PARTITION can be used to drop one or more RANGE or LIST partitions. This statement cannot be used with HASH or KEY partitions; instead, use COALESCE PARTITION (see below). Any data that was stored in the dropped partitions named in the partition_names list is discarded. For example, given the table t1 defined previously, you can drop the partitions named p0 and p1 as shown here:

ALTER TABLE t1 DROP PARTITION p0, p1;

ADD PARTITION and DROP PARTITION do not currently support IF [NOT] EXISTS. It is also not possible to rename a partition or a partitioned table. Instead, if you wish to rename a partition, you must drop and re-create the partition; if you wish to rename a partitioned table, you must instead drop all partitions, rename the table, and then add back the partitions that were dropped.

COALESCE PARTITION can be used with a table that is partitioned by HASH or KEY to reduce the number of partitions by number. Suppose that you have created table t2 using the following definition:

CREATE TABLE t2 (
    name VARCHAR (30),
    started DATE
)
PARTITION BY HASH( YEAR(started) )
PARTITIONS 6;

You can reduce the number of partitions used by t2 from 6 to 4 using the following statement:

ALTER TABLE t2 COALESCE PARTITION 2;

The data contained in the last number partitions will be merged into the remaining partitions. In this case, partitions 4 and 5 will be merged into the first 4 partitions (the partitions numbered 0, 1, 2, and 3).

To change some but not all the partitions used by a partitioned table, you can use REORGANIZE PARTITION. This statement can be used in several ways:

For more detailed information about and examples of ALTER TABLE ... REORGANIZE PARTITION statements, see Section 20.3, “Partition Management”.

Several additional options were introduced in MySQL 5.1.5 for providing partition maintenance and repair functionality analogous to that implemented for non-partitioned tables by statements such as CHECK TABLE and REPAIR TABLE (which are not supported for partitioned tables). These include ANALYZE PARTITION, CHECK PARTITION, OPTIMIZE PARTITION, REBUILD PARTITION, and REPAIR PARTITION. Each of these options takes a partition_names clause consisting of one or more names of partitions, separated by commas. The partitions must already exist in the table to be altered. For more information and examples, see Section 20.3.3, “Maintenance of Partitions”.

The ANALYZE PARTITION, CHECK PARTITION, OPTIMIZE PARTITION, and REPAIR PARTITION options were removed in MySQL 5.1.24.

REMOVE PARTITIONING was introduced in MySQL 5.1.8 for the purpose of removing a table's partitioning without otherwise affecting the table or its data. (Previously, this was done using the ENGINE option.) This option can be combined with other ALTER TABLE options such as those used to add, drop, or rename drop columns or indexes.

In MySQL 5.1.7 and earlier, using the ENGINE option with ALTER TABLE caused any partitioning that a table might have had to be removed. Beginning with MySQL 5.1.8, this option merely changes the storage engine used by the table and no longer affects partitioning in any way.