praveen

• Jul 14th, 2006

 

No it is not possible for change the data type without droping.

NewUser

• Feb 1st, 2007

 

Yes, we can change the datatype without dropping the column but only for certain cases,

e.g
a) if the column is not populated.
b) we increase the size even if it is populated.
We can even change it from
e.g char(4) to number(10) provided the existing values are numbers i.e. can be converted implicitly from one type to the other.