ALTER TABLE

Alter an existing table.

Table of Contents

Synopsis

ALTER [ BLOB ] TABLE { ONLY table_ident
                       | table_ident [ PARTITION (partition_column = value [ , ... ]) ] }
  { SET ( parameter = value [ , ... ] )
    | RESET ( parameter [ , ... ] )
    | ADD [ COLUMN ] column_name data_type [ column_constraint [ ... ] ]
    | OPEN
    | CLOSE
    | RENAME TO table_ident
    | REROUTE reroute_option
  }

where column_constraint is:

{ PRIMARY KEY |
  NOT NULL |
  INDEX { OFF | USING { PLAIN |
                        FULLTEXT [ WITH ( analyzer = analyzer_name ) ]  }
}

Description

ALTER TABLE can be used to modify an existing table definition. It provides options to add columns, modify constraints, enabling or disabling table parameters and allows to execute a shard reroute allocation.

Use the BLOB keyword in order to alter a blob table (see Blobs). Blob tables cannot have custom columns which means that the ADD COLUMN keyword won’t work.

While altering a partitioned table, using ONLY will apply changes for the table only and not for any possible existing partitions. So these changes will only be applied to new partitions. The ONLY keyword cannot be used together with a PARTITION clause.

See the CREATE TABLE WITH for a list of available parameters.

table_ident

The name (optionally schema-qualified) of the table to alter.

Clauses

PARTITION

If the table is partitioned this clause can be used to alter only a single partition.

Note

BLOB tables cannot be partitioned and hence this clause cannot be used.

This clause identifies a single partition. It takes one or more partition columns with a value each to identify the partition to alter.

[ PARTITION ( partition_column = value [ , ... ] ) ]
partition_column

The name of the column by which the table is partitioned.

All partition columns that were part of the PARTITIONED BY of the CREATE TABLE statement must be specified.

value

The columns value.

Arguments

SET/RESET

Can be used to change a table parameter to a different value. Using RESET will reset the parameter to its default value.

parameter

The name of the parameter that is set to a new value or its default.

The supported parameters are listed in the CREATE TABLE WITH CLAUSE documentation. In addition to those, for dynamically changing the number of allocated shards, the parameter number_of_shards can be used. For more more info on that, see Changing the Number of Shards.

ADD COLUMN

Can be used to add an additional column to a table. While columns can be added at any time, adding a new generated column is only possible if the table is empty.

data_type

Data type of the column which should be added.

column_name

Name of the column which should be added.

OPEN/CLOSE

Can be used to open or close the table, respectively. Closing a table prevents all operations, except ALTER TABLE ... OPEN, to fail. Operations on closed partitions will not produce an exception, but will have no effect. Similarly, like SELECT and INSERT on partitioned will exclude closed partitions and continue working.

RENAME TO

Can be used to rename a table, while maintaining its schema and data. During this operation the shards of the table will become temporarily unavailable.

REROUTE

The REROUTE command provides various options to manually control the allocation of shards. It allows the enforcement of explicit allocations, cancellations and the moving of shards between nodes in a cluster. See Reroute Shards to get the convenient use-cases.

The rowcount defines if the reroute or allocation process of a shard was acknowledged or rejected.

Note

Partitioned tables require a Partition Clause in order to specify a unique shard_id.

[ REROUTE reroute_option]

where reroute_option is:

{ MOVE SHARD shard_id FROM node_id TO node_id
  | ALLOCATE REPLICA SHARD shard_id ON node_id
  | CANCEL SHARD shard_id ON node_id [ WITH (allow_primary = {TRUE|FALSE}) ]
}
shard_id

The shard id. Ranges from 0 up to the specified number of Shards shards of a table.

node_id

The node ID within the cluster.

See Nodes how to gain the unique ID.

REROUTE suports the following options to start/stop shard allocation:

MOVE

A started shard gets moved from one node to another. It requests a table_ident and a shard_id to identify the shard that receives the new allocation. Specify FROM node_id for the node to move the shard from and TO node_id to move the shard to.

ALLOCATE REPLICA

Allows to force allocation of an unassigned replica shard on a specific node.

CANCEL

This cancels the allocation/recovery of a shard_id of a table_ident on a given node_id. The allow_primary flag indicates if it is allowed to cancel the allocation of a primary shard.