Provided by: postgres-xc-client_1.1-2ubuntu2_amd64 
NAME
ALTER_TABLE - change the definition of a table
SYNOPSIS
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] [ ONLY ] name [ * ]
action [, ... ]
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] [ ONLY ] name [ * ]
RENAME [ COLUMN ] column_name TO new_column_name
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] [ ONLY ] name [ * ]
RENAME CONSTRAINT constraint_name TO new_constraint_name
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name
RENAME TO new_name
ALTER TABLE [ IF EXISTS ] name
SET SCHEMA new_schema
where action is one of:
ADD [ COLUMN ] column_name data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ column_constraint [ ... ] ]
DROP [ COLUMN ] [ IF EXISTS ] column_name [ RESTRICT | CASCADE ]
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name [ SET DATA ] TYPE data_type [ COLLATE collation ] [ USING expression ]
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name SET DEFAULT expression
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name DROP DEFAULT
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name { SET | DROP } NOT NULL
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name SET STATISTICS integer
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name SET ( attribute_option = value [, ... ] )
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name RESET ( attribute_option [, ... ] )
ALTER [ COLUMN ] column_name SET STORAGE { PLAIN | EXTERNAL | EXTENDED | MAIN }
ADD table_constraint [ NOT VALID ]
ADD table_constraint_using_index
VALIDATE CONSTRAINT constraint_name
DROP CONSTRAINT [ IF EXISTS ] constraint_name [ RESTRICT | CASCADE ]
DISABLE TRIGGER [ trigger_name | ALL | USER ]
ENABLE TRIGGER [ trigger_name | ALL | USER ]
ENABLE REPLICA TRIGGER trigger_name
ENABLE ALWAYS TRIGGER trigger_name
DISABLE RULE rewrite_rule_name
ENABLE RULE rewrite_rule_name
ENABLE REPLICA RULE rewrite_rule_name
ENABLE ALWAYS RULE rewrite_rule_name
CLUSTER ON index_name
SET WITHOUT CLUSTER
SET WITH OIDS
SET WITHOUT OIDS
SET ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] )
RESET ( storage_parameter [, ... ] )
INHERIT parent_table
NO INHERIT parent_table
OF type_name
NOT OF
OWNER TO new_owner
SET TABLESPACE new_tablespace
DISTRIBUTE BY { REPLICATION | ROUNDROBIN | { [HASH | MODULO ] ( column_name ) } }
TO { GROUP groupname | NODE ( nodename [, ... ] ) }
ADD NODE ( nodename [, ... ] )
DELETE NODE ( nodename [, ... ] )
and table_constraint_using_index is:
[ CONSTRAINT constraint_name ]
{ UNIQUE | PRIMARY KEY } USING INDEX index_name
[ DEFERRABLE | NOT DEFERRABLE ] [ INITIALLY DEFERRED | INITIALLY IMMEDIATE ]
DESCRIPTION
Note
The following description applies both to Postgres-XC and PostgreSQL if not described explicitly.
ALTER TABLE changes the definition of an existing table. There are several subforms:
ADD COLUMN
This form adds a new column to the table, using the same syntax as CREATE TABLE (CREATE_TABLE(7)).
DROP COLUMN [ IF EXISTS ]
This form drops a column from a table. Indexes and table constraints involving the column will be
automatically dropped as well. You will need to say CASCADE if anything outside the table depends on
the column, for example, foreign key references or views. If IF EXISTS is specified and the column
does not exist, no error is thrown. In this case a notice is issued instead.
IF EXISTS
Do not throw an error if the table does not exist. A notice is issued in this case.
SET DATA TYPE
This form changes the type of a column of a table. Indexes and simple table constraints involving the
column will be automatically converted to use the new column type by reparsing the originally
supplied expression. The optional COLLATE clause specifies a collation for the new column; if
omitted, the collation is the default for the new column type. The optional USING clause specifies
how to compute the new column value from the old; if omitted, the default conversion is the same as
an assignment cast from old data type to new. A USING clause must be provided if there is no implicit
or assignment cast from old to new type.
SET/DROP DEFAULT
These forms set or remove the default value for a column. The default values only apply to subsequent
INSERT commands; they do not cause rows already in the table to change. Defaults can also be created
for views, in which case they are inserted into INSERT statements on the view before the view's ON
INSERT rule is applied.
SET/DROP NOT NULL
These forms change whether a column is marked to allow null values or to reject null values. You can
only use SET NOT NULL when the column contains no null values.
SET STATISTICS
This form sets the per-column statistics-gathering target for subsequent ANALYZE(7) operations. The
target can be set in the range 0 to 10000; alternatively, set it to -1 to revert to using the system
default statistics target (default_statistics_target). For more information on the use of statistics
by the Postgres-XC query planner, refer to Section 14.2, “Statistics Used by the Planner”, in the
documentation.
SET ( attribute_option = value [, ... ] ), RESET ( attribute_option [, ... ] )
This form sets or resets per-attribute options. Currently, the only defined per-attribute options are
n_distinct and n_distinct_inherited, which override the number-of-distinct-values estimates made by
subsequent ANALYZE(7) operations. n_distinct affects the statistics for the table itself, while
n_distinct_inherited affects the statistics gathered for the table plus its inheritance children.
When set to a positive value, ANALYZE will assume that the column contains exactly the specified
number of distinct nonnull values. When set to a negative value, which must be greater than or equal
to -1, ANALYZE will assume that the number of distinct nonnull values in the column is linear in the
size of the table; the exact count is to be computed by multiplying the estimated table size by the
absolute value of the given number. For example, a value of -1 implies that all values in the column
are distinct, while a value of -0.5 implies that each value appears twice on the average. This can be
useful when the size of the table changes over time, since the multiplication by the number of rows
in the table is not performed until query planning time. Specify a value of 0 to revert to estimating
the number of distinct values normally. For more information on the use of statistics by the
Postgres-XC query planner, refer to Section 14.2, “Statistics Used by the Planner”, in the
documentation.
SET STORAGE
This form sets the storage mode for a column. This controls whether this column is held inline or in
a secondary TOAST table, and whether the data should be compressed or not. PLAIN must be used for
fixed-length values such as integer and is inline, uncompressed. MAIN is for inline, compressible
data. EXTERNAL is for external, uncompressed data, and EXTENDED is for external, compressed data.
EXTENDED is the default for most data types that support non-PLAIN storage. Use of EXTERNAL will make
substring operations on very large text and bytea values run faster, at the penalty of increased
storage space. Note that SET STORAGE doesn't itself change anything in the table, it just sets the
strategy to be pursued during future table updates. See Section 58.2, “TOAST”, in the documentation
for more information.
ADD table_constraint [ NOT VALID ]
This form adds a new constraint to a table using the same syntax as CREATE TABLE (CREATE_TABLE(7)),
plus the option NOT VALID, which is currently only allowed for foreign key and CHECK constraints. If
the constraint is marked NOT VALID, the potentially-lengthy initial check to verify that all rows in
the table satisfy the constraint is skipped. The constraint will still be enforced against subsequent
inserts or updates (that is, they'll fail unless there is a matching row in the referenced table, in
the case of foreign keys; and they'll fail unless the new row matches the specified check
constraints). But the database will not assume that the constraint holds for all rows in the table,
until it is validated by using the VALIDATE CONSTRAINT option.
ADD table_constraint_using_index
This form adds a new PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE constraint to a table based on an existing unique index.
All the columns of the index will be included in the constraint.
The index cannot have expression columns nor be a partial index. Also, it must be a b-tree index with
default sort ordering. These restrictions ensure that the index is equivalent to one that would be
built by a regular ADD PRIMARY KEY or ADD UNIQUE command.
If PRIMARY KEY is specified, and the index's columns are not already marked NOT NULL, then this
command will attempt to do ALTER COLUMN SET NOT NULL against each such column. That requires a full
table scan to verify the column(s) contain no nulls. In all other cases, this is a fast operation.
If a constraint name is provided then the index will be renamed to match the constraint name.
Otherwise the constraint will be named the same as the index.
After this command is executed, the index is “owned” by the constraint, in the same way as if the
index had been built by a regular ADD PRIMARY KEY or ADD UNIQUE command. In particular, dropping the
constraint will make the index disappear too.
Note
Adding a constraint using an existing index can be helpful in situations where a new constraint
needs to be added without blocking table updates for a long time. To do that, create the index
using CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY, and then install it as an official constraint using this syntax.
See the example below.
VALIDATE CONSTRAINT
This form validates a foreign key or check constraint that was previously created as NOT VALID, by
scanning the table to ensure there are no rows for which the constraint is not satisfied. Nothing
happens if the constraint is already marked valid. The value of separating validation from initial
creation of the constraint is that validation requires a lesser lock on the table than constraint
creation does.
DROP CONSTRAINT [ IF EXISTS ]
This form drops the specified constraint on a table. If IF EXISTS is specified and the constraint
does not exist, no error is thrown. In this case a notice is issued instead.
DISABLE/ENABLE [ REPLICA | ALWAYS ] TRIGGER
These forms configure the firing of trigger(s) belonging to the table. A disabled trigger is still
known to the system, but is not executed when its triggering event occurs. For a deferred trigger,
the enable status is checked when the event occurs, not when the trigger function is actually
executed. One can disable or enable a single trigger specified by name, or all triggers on the table,
or only user triggers (this option excludes internally generated constraint triggers such as those
that are used to implement foreign key constraints or deferrable uniqueness and exclusion
constraints). Disabling or enabling internally generated constraint triggers requires superuser
privileges; it should be done with caution since of course the integrity of the constraint cannot be
guaranteed if the triggers are not executed. The trigger firing mechanism is also affected by the
configuration variable session_replication_role. Simply enabled triggers will fire when the
replication role is “origin” (the default) or “local”. Triggers configured as ENABLE REPLICA will
only fire if the session is in “replica” mode, and triggers configured as ENABLE ALWAYS will fire
regardless of the current replication mode.
DISABLE/ENABLE [ REPLICA | ALWAYS ] RULE
These forms configure the firing of rewrite rules belonging to the table. A disabled rule is still
known to the system, but is not applied during query rewriting. The semantics are as for
disabled/enabled triggers. This configuration is ignored for ON SELECT rules, which are always
applied in order to keep views working even if the current session is in a non-default replication
role.
CLUSTER ON
This form selects the default index for future CLUSTER(7) operations. It does not actually re-cluster
the table.
SET WITHOUT CLUSTER
This form removes the most recently used CLUSTER(7) index specification from the table. This affects
future cluster operations that don't specify an index.
SET WITH OIDS
This form adds an oid system column to the table (see Section 5.4, “System Columns”, in the
documentation). It does nothing if the table already has OIDs.
Note that this is not equivalent to ADD COLUMN oid oid; that would add a normal column that happened
to be named oid, not a system column.
SET WITHOUT OIDS
This form removes the oid system column from the table. This is exactly equivalent to DROP COLUMN oid
RESTRICT, except that it will not complain if there is already no oid column.
SET ( storage_parameter = value [, ... ] )
This form changes one or more storage parameters for the table. See Storage Parameters for details on
the available parameters. Note that the table contents will not be modified immediately by this
command; depending on the parameter you might need to rewrite the table to get the desired effects.
That can be done with VACUUM FULL, CLUSTER(7) or one of the forms of ALTER TABLE that forces a table
rewrite.
Note
While CREATE TABLE allows OIDS to be specified in the WITH (storage_parameter) syntax, ALTER
TABLE does not treat OIDS as a storage parameter. Instead use the SET WITH OIDS and SET WITHOUT
OIDS forms to change OID status.
RESET ( storage_parameter [, ... ] )
This form resets one or more storage parameters to their defaults. As with SET, a table rewrite might
be needed to update the table entirely.
INHERIT parent_table
This form adds the target table as a new child of the specified parent table. Subsequently, queries
against the parent will include records of the target table. To be added as a child, the target table
must already contain all the same columns as the parent (it could have additional columns, too). The
columns must have matching data types, and if they have NOT NULL constraints in the parent then they
must also have NOT NULL constraints in the child.
There must also be matching child-table constraints for all CHECK constraints of the parent, except
those marked non-inheritable (that is, created with ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT ... NO INHERIT) in
the parent, which are ignored; all child-table constraints matched must not be marked
non-inheritable. Currently UNIQUE, PRIMARY KEY, and FOREIGN KEY constraints are not considered, but
this might change in the future.
NO INHERIT parent_table
This form removes the target table from the list of children of the specified parent table. Queries
against the parent table will no longer include records drawn from the target table.
OF type_name
This form links the table to a composite type as though CREATE TABLE OF had formed it. The table's
list of column names and types must precisely match that of the composite type; the presence of an
oid system column is permitted to differ. The table must not inherit from any other table. These
restrictions ensure that CREATE TABLE OF would permit an equivalent table definition.
NOT OF
This form dissociates a typed table from its type.
OWNER
This form changes the owner of the table, sequence, or view to the specified user.
SET TABLESPACE
This form changes the table's tablespace to the specified tablespace and moves the data file(s)
associated with the table to the new tablespace. Indexes on the table, if any, are not moved; but
they can be moved separately with additional SET TABLESPACE commands. See also CREATE TABLESPACE
(CREATE_TABLESPACE(7)).
RENAME
The RENAME forms change the name of a table (or an index, sequence, or view), the name of an
individual column in a table, or the name of a constraint of the table. There is no effect on the
stored data.
SET SCHEMA
This form moves the table into another schema. Associated indexes, constraints, and sequences owned
by table columns are moved as well.
DISTRIBUTE BY
Note
The following description applies only to Postgres-XC
This clause specifies how the table is distributed or replicated among Datanodes.
REPLICATION
Each row of the table will be replicated into all the Datanode of the Postgres-XC database
cluster.
ROUNDROBIN
Each row of the table will be placed in one of the Datanodes by round-robin manner. The value of
the row will not be needed to determine what Datanode to go.
HASH ( column_name )
Each row of the table will be placed based on the hash value of the specified column. Following
type is allowed as distribution column: INT8, INT2, OID, INT4, BOOL, INT2VECTOR, OIDVECTOR, CHAR,
NAME, TEXT, BPCHAR, BYTEA, VARCHAR, FLOAT4, FLOAT8, NUMERIC, CASH, ABSTIME, RELTIME, DATE, TIME,
TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMPTZ, INTERVAL, and TIMETZ.
Please note that floating point is not allowed as a basis of the distribution column.
MODULO ( column_name )
Each row of the table will be placed based on the modulo of the specified column. Following type
is allowed as distribution column: INT8, INT2, OID, INT4, BOOL, INT2VECTOR, OIDVECTOR, CHAR,
NAME, TEXT, BPCHAR, BYTEA, VARCHAR, FLOAT4, FLOAT8, NUMERIC, CASH, ABSTIME, RELTIME, DATE, TIME,
TIMESTAMP, TIMESTAMPTZ, INTERVAL, and TIMETZ.
Please note that floating point is not allowed as a basis of the distribution column.
TO GROUP, TO NODE
This defines the list of nodes on which table data exists.
ADD NODE
This adds a list of nodes where data of table is distributed to the existing list. If the list of
nodes added contains nodes already used by table, an error is returned.
DELETE NODE
This deletes a list of nodes where data of table is distributed to the existing list. If the list of
nodes deleted contains nodes not used by table, an error is returned.
All the actions except RENAME and SET SCHEMA can be combined into a list of multiple alterations to apply
in parallel. For example, it is possible to add several columns and/or alter the type of several columns
in a single command. This is particularly useful with large tables, since only one pass over the table
need be made.
You must own the table to use ALTER TABLE. To change the schema of a table, you must also have CREATE
privilege on the new schema. To add the table as a new child of a parent table, you must own the parent
table as well. To alter the owner, you must also be a direct or indirect member of the new owning role,
and that role must have CREATE privilege on the table's schema. (These restrictions enforce that altering
the owner doesn't do anything you couldn't do by dropping and recreating the table. However, a superuser
can alter ownership of any table anyway.) To add a column or alter a column type or use the OF clause,
you must also have USAGE privilege on the data type.
PARAMETERS
name
The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table to alter. If ONLY is specified before the
table name, only that table is altered. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant
tables (if any) are altered. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly
indicate that descendant tables are included.
column_name
Name of a new or existing column.
new_column_name
New name for an existing column.
new_name
New name for the table.
type
Data type of the new column, or new data type for an existing column.
table_constraint
New table constraint for the table.
constraint_name
Name of an existing constraint to drop.
CASCADE
Automatically drop objects that depend on the dropped column or constraint (for example, views
referencing the column).
RESTRICT
Refuse to drop the column or constraint if there are any dependent objects. This is the default
behavior.
trigger_name
Name of a single trigger to disable or enable.
ALL
Disable or enable all triggers belonging to the table. (This requires superuser privilege if any of
the triggers are internally generated constraint triggers such as those that are used to implement
foreign key constraints or deferrable uniqueness and exclusion constraints.)
USER
Disable or enable all triggers belonging to the table except for internally generated constraint
triggers such as those that are used to implement foreign key constraints or deferrable uniqueness
and exclusion constraints.
index_name
The index name on which the table should be marked for clustering.
storage_parameter
The name of a table storage parameter.
value
The new value for a table storage parameter. This might be a number or a word depending on the
parameter.
parent_table
A parent table to associate or de-associate with this table.
new_owner
The user name of the new owner of the table.
new_tablespace
The name of the tablespace to which the table will be moved.
new_schema
The name of the schema to which the table will be moved.
nodename
It defines a Postgres-XC node of catalog pgxc_node.
groupname
It defines a Postgres-XC node group in catalog pgxc_group.
NOTES
The key word COLUMN is noise and can be omitted.
When a column is added with ADD COLUMN, all existing rows in the table are initialized with the column's
default value (NULL if no DEFAULT clause is specified).
Adding a column with a non-null default or changing the type of an existing column will require the
entire table and indexes to be rewritten. As an exception, if the USING clause does not change the column
contents and the old type is either binary coercible to the new type or an unconstrained domain over the
new type, a table rewrite is not needed, but any indexes on the affected columns must still be rebuilt.
Adding or removing a system oid column also requires rewriting the entire table. Table and/or index
rebuilds may take a significant amount of time for a large table; and will temporarily require as much as
double the disk space.
Adding a CHECK or NOT NULL constraint requires scanning the table to verify that existing rows meet the
constraint.
The main reason for providing the option to specify multiple changes in a single ALTER TABLE is that
multiple table scans or rewrites can thereby be combined into a single pass over the table.
The DROP COLUMN form does not physically remove the column, but simply makes it invisible to SQL
operations. Subsequent insert and update operations in the table will store a null value for the column.
Thus, dropping a column is quick but it will not immediately reduce the on-disk size of your table, as
the space occupied by the dropped column is not reclaimed. The space will be reclaimed over time as
existing rows are updated. (These statements do not apply when dropping the system oid column; that is
done with an immediate rewrite.)
To force an immediate rewrite of the table, you can use VACUUM FULL, CLUSTER(7) or one of the forms of
ALTER TABLE that forces a rewrite. This results in no semantically-visible change in the table, but gets
rid of no-longer-useful data.
The USING option of SET DATA TYPE can actually specify any expression involving the old values of the
row; that is, it can refer to other columns as well as the one being converted. This allows very general
conversions to be done with the SET DATA TYPE syntax. Because of this flexibility, the USING expression
is not applied to the column's default value (if any); the result might not be a constant expression as
required for a default. This means that when there is no implicit or assignment cast from old to new
type, SET DATA TYPE might fail to convert the default even though a USING clause is supplied. In such
cases, drop the default with DROP DEFAULT, perform the ALTER TYPE, and then use SET DEFAULT to add a
suitable new default. Similar considerations apply to indexes and constraints involving the column.
If a table has any descendant tables, it is not permitted to add, rename, or change the type of a column,
or rename an inherited constraint in the parent table without doing the same to the descendants. That is,
ALTER TABLE ONLY will be rejected. This ensures that the descendants always have columns matching the
parent.
A recursive DROP COLUMN operation will remove a descendant table's column only if the descendant does not
inherit that column from any other parents and never had an independent definition of the column. A
nonrecursive DROP COLUMN (i.e., ALTER TABLE ONLY ... DROP COLUMN) never removes any descendant columns,
but instead marks them as independently defined rather than inherited.
The TRIGGER, CLUSTER, OWNER, and TABLESPACE actions never recurse to descendant tables; that is, they
always act as though ONLY were specified. Adding a constraint recurses only for CHECK constraints that
are not marked NO INHERIT.
Changing any part of a system catalog table is not permitted.
Refer to CREATE TABLE (CREATE_TABLE(7)) for a further description of valid parameters. Chapter 5, Data
Definition, in the documentation has further information on inheritance.
Note
The following description applies only to Postgres-XC
ALTER TABLE with clauses DISTRIBUTE BY, ADD NODE, DELETE NODE, TO NODE or TO GROUP is used for data
redistribution among nodes specific to Postgres-XC. Those clauses cannot be used with other commands.
Multiple redistribution scenarios are possible depending on modifications done:
Default redistribution:
This is the slowest scenario possible. It is done in 3 or 4 steps. Data is firstly saved on
Coordinator by fetching all the data with COPY TO command. At this point all the tuples are saved
using tuple store. The amount of cache allowed for tuple store operation can be controlled with
work_mem. Then the table is truncated on all the nodes. Then catalogs are updated. Finally data
inside tuple store is redistributed using an internal COPY FROM mechanism. REINDEX is issued if
necessary. The overall performance of this scenario is close to the time necessary to run
consecutively COPY TO and COPY FROM.
Redistribution from replicated to replicated table:
The node list of a table can have new nodes as well as removed nodes. If nodes are only removed,
TRUNCATE is launched to remote nodes that are removed. If new nodes are added, then table data is
fetch on Coordinator with
COPY TO and stored inside a tuplestore controlled with work_mem, then data stored is only sent to
the new nodes using COPY FROM with data stored inside the tuplestore. REINDEX is issued if
necessary.
Redistribution from replicated to distributed table:
If the relation node list contains new nodes, the default redistribution mechanism is used. However,
if the node list of relation after redistribution is included in node list of relation after
redistribution, as all the tuples are already located on remote nodes, it is not necessary to fetch
any data on Coordinator. Hence, DELETE is used to remove on remote nodes only the necessary tuples.
This query uses selects tuples to remove with conditions based on the number of nodes in node list of
relation after redistribution, the HASH or MODULO value used for new distribution and the remote node
itself where DELETE is launched.. REINDEX is issued if necessary.
Redistribution from distributed to replicated table:
In this case the default redistribution mechanism is used.
EXAMPLES
To add a column of type varchar to a table:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD COLUMN address varchar(30);
To drop a column from a table:
ALTER TABLE distributors DROP COLUMN address RESTRICT;
To change the types of two existing columns in one operation:
ALTER TABLE distributors
ALTER COLUMN address TYPE varchar(80),
ALTER COLUMN name TYPE varchar(100);
To change an integer column containing UNIX timestamps to timestamp with time zone via a USING clause:
ALTER TABLE foo
ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp SET DATA TYPE timestamp with time zone
USING
timestamp with time zone 'epoch' + foo_timestamp * interval '1 second';
The same, when the column has a default expression that won't automatically cast to the new data type:
ALTER TABLE foo
ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp DROP DEFAULT,
ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp TYPE timestamp with time zone
USING
timestamp with time zone 'epoch' + foo_timestamp * interval '1 second',
ALTER COLUMN foo_timestamp SET DEFAULT now();
To rename an existing column:
ALTER TABLE distributors RENAME COLUMN address TO city;
To rename an existing table:
ALTER TABLE distributors RENAME TO suppliers;
To rename an existing constraint:
ALTER TABLE distributors RENAME CONSTRAINT zipchk TO zip_check;
To add a not-null constraint to a column:
ALTER TABLE distributors ALTER COLUMN street SET NOT NULL;
To remove a not-null constraint from a column:
ALTER TABLE distributors ALTER COLUMN street DROP NOT NULL;
To add a check constraint to a table and all its children:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT zipchk CHECK (char_length(zipcode) = 5);
To add a check constraint only to a table and not to its children:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT zipchk CHECK (char_length(zipcode) = 5) NO INHERIT;
(The check constraint will not be inherited by future children, either.)
To remove a check constraint from a table and all its children:
ALTER TABLE distributors DROP CONSTRAINT zipchk;
To remove a check constraint from one table only:
ALTER TABLE ONLY distributors DROP CONSTRAINT zipchk;
(The check constraint remains in place for any child tables.)
To add a foreign key constraint to a table:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT distfk FOREIGN KEY (address) REFERENCES addresses (address);
To add a (multicolumn) unique constraint to a table:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD CONSTRAINT dist_id_zipcode_key UNIQUE (dist_id, zipcode);
To add an automatically named primary key constraint to a table, noting that a table can only ever have
one primary key:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD PRIMARY KEY (dist_id);
To move a table to a different tablespace:
ALTER TABLE distributors SET TABLESPACE fasttablespace;
To move a table to a different schema:
ALTER TABLE myschema.distributors SET SCHEMA yourschema;
To recreate a primary key constraint, without blocking updates while the index is rebuilt:
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX CONCURRENTLY dist_id_temp_idx ON distributors (dist_id);
ALTER TABLE distributors DROP CONSTRAINT distributors_pkey,
ADD CONSTRAINT distributors_pkey PRIMARY KEY USING INDEX dist_id_temp_idx;
To change the distribution type and the list of nodes where table data is located:
ALTER TABLE distributors TO NODE (dn1, dn7), DISTRIBUTE BY HASH(dist_id);
To add a node where data of table is distributed:
ALTER TABLE distributors ADD NODE (dn9, dn14);
To remove a node where data of table is distributed:
ALTER TABLE distributors DELETE NODE (dn4, dn0);
COMPATIBILITY
The forms ADD (without USING INDEX), DROP, SET DEFAULT, and SET DATA TYPE (without USING) conform with
the SQL standard. The other forms are Postgres-XC extensions of the SQL standard. Also, the ability to
specify more than one manipulation in a single ALTER TABLE command is an extension.
ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN can be used to drop the only column of a table, leaving a zero-column table. This
is an extension of SQL, which disallows zero-column tables.
SEE ALSO
CREATE TABLE (CREATE_TABLE(7))