In the context of this exercise, can we add a column at a specific position to a table?
Answer
No, unfortunately, you cannot specify what position to add a column to a table.
By default, a new column will always be added at the end of the table. For most intents and purposes, this should not affect much, since you can always select the columns in any order, for instance, like
SELECT col3, col1, col2
If column order is very important, then an alternative is to create a new table and add the columns in the specific order they should appear.
How would the order/index of columns affect anything?
To me it seems like something better left for the implementation. From the user (don’t want to hard-code index) and theoretical (sets and relations) standpoint this does not seem meaningful.
Besides a view seem like a much better idea than a whole new table (the cost of copy?!)
I more detailed answer would be appreciated, perhaps clarifying
how is the data stored?
how does ALTER work and what is the cost?
link/example/reference to future lesson about making new table/view and the cost of that
I think SQLite doesn’t support adding multiple columns with a single statement.
But in MySQL, we can add multiple columns with a single statement.
Example-
ALTER TABLE celebs
ADD COLUMN (gender TEXT, marital_status TEXT);
The above statement will add two new columns to the MySQL database table.
Note: In this case, the AFTER clause will not work. I tried adding multiple columns at a specific position but it didn’t work. The AFTER clause is working when adding only one column.
Yes, it is possible to add a column at a specific position to a table in SQL using the ALTER TABLE statement with the ADD COLUMN clause. However, the specific syntax for adding a column at a specific position may vary depending on the database management system (DBMS) you are using.
In general, you can add a column to a specific position in a table by specifying the column’s name and data type, as well as the position where the column should be inserted. Here’s an example syntax that works for some common SQL database management systems:
-- Add a new column to a table at a specific position
ALTER TABLE my_table ADD COLUMN new_column data_type AFTER column_name;
In this syntax, replace “my_table” with the name of the table you want to add the column to, “new_column” with the name of the new column, “data_type” with the data type of the new column, and “column_name” with the name of the column that the new column should be inserted after.
Note that the exact syntax for specifying the position of the new column may differ between different SQL database management systems, so it’s important to consult your database’s documentation for the correct syntax. Additionally, adding a column to a specific position may not be supported by all database management systems.