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Archives of the TeradataForum
Message Posted: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 @ 14:47:39 GMT
| Subj: | | Re: Why previous format of a varchar field is preserved after alter size of the column |
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| From: | | John Hall |
Anomy.Anom wrote:
| | "Can somebody explain me why the previous format is still preserved? I know that if in my alter table statement if I explicitly
mention the format as FORMAT 'X(20)') the modified format (x(20)) is accepted." | |
I guess you could argue that it's some kind of oversight, but I think that you'll find that the previous FORMAT is retained because
of the possibility of existing applications which were written expecting no more than a VARCHAR(10) field.
After all, you could be ALTER'ing the column just a few minutes later or years after it was defined - there's no way of knowing. By
forcing the ALTER'd column to be FORMAT(x(10)), existing applications won't break because you performed the ALTER.
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