SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference

Chapter 24. Changing and Dropping Tables

24.1 Introduction

The UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE statements are used to update the contents of a table. In MySQL, we can also change the structure of a table, even when that table contains millions of rows. We can add columns, change the data type of an existing column, add integrity constraints, and even delete entire tables. This chapter describes all the features for dropping tables (with the DROP TABLE statement), renaming them (with the RENAME statement), and changing them (with the ALTER TABLE statement).

Note

Most examples in this book assume that each table contains its original contents. If you ...