While Altering a table in mysql to Add a new Column I am getting Fatal Error Occurred.. I ve seen the relevant answers for this question where I found an Answer like :--
Make a new table with the same structure.
Add the column to the new table.
Insert the data from the old table into the new table.
Rename the old table to old.bak
Rename the new table to the old table.
If all went well, delete the old.bak.
But my original table contains some triggers , indexes, etc.
My question is
"Can I write my Alter Script in any diff. way to overcome this fatal Error" ?
My concern is related to MYSQL, but any other RDBMS related answers also fine...
This is MySQL specific: You can use a combination of [SHOW CREATE TABLE tabname][1] and [SHOW TRIGGERS WHERE Table = 'tabname'][2] to regenerate the table and triggers. You probably don't want the triggers firing when you are copying the rows. Also, if the table is of a significant size or you have a high enough rate of change, you probably want to prevent writes to it during the copy.
Sequence of steps:
Prevent writes to table (optional)
Create new table with SHOW CREATE TABLE output.
Apply schema changes.
Copy data from old table to new table.
Apply triggers from SHOW TRIGGERS output.
Swap old and new tables.
Hope this helps.
Related
In MySQL, which is a better practice? Always use "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS", or check first the existence of the table using "SHOW TABLES LIKE" before making the table?
I have to regularly save a page where the table for it may or may not be there (sometimes, it is deliberately deleted when not in use). Previously, I used to do "SHOW TABLES LIKE" to check if that table exists before I insert new entries. But I changed it to "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS". Either way, I just do a "INSERT .. ON DUPLICATE UPDATE" to add new or update existing data.
I don't know how to benchmark this, which is why I am asking.
Performance isn't critical with these operations.
The key aspect is race conditions. If you use CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS you know it will happen or it won't. If two threads happen to be doing this statement one will succeed and the other won't be negatively affected.
If a SHOW TABLE LIKE was used in both threads, both could detect the table didn't exist, and upon trying to create the table, one would fail.
So use CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS to mitigate race conditions. Also in general is better to use a database provided feature than roll your own.
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS is option provided by MySQL and good to use. If table will not exist this statement will create else will skip.
other end, if you first check table existence by show table like then either skip or create as per result of condition/check. Ultimately you are increasing one step or runtime of you script or program for same functionality which you can achieve in single step.
I'm trying to drop a table containing several hundred thousand column-based records. Normally when creating the database I use a column-based engine (infinidb) but in this case I forgot to include the ENGINE statement. So the database is pretty much unusable for my needs. Now I have a database full of tables that are taking forever to drop (it's been two hours and nothing has happened). I tried the ALTER TABLE table ENGINE=INFINIDB command but again, it's taking forever (see above re: two hours). EDIT: The first command I tried was DROP TABLE. It hung with every single table. Then I tried the ALTER command in case that was faster for some reason, but it wasn't.
Is there another way to get rid of this database? E.g. manually going into the /mysql/ directory and deleting the database? I guess I could just rename it and leave it, but I'd rather get rid of it entirely so it's not taking up space.
First of all you said Can't drop table. But in post you mentioned ALTER TABLE table ENGINE=INFINIDB.
But DROP != ALTER it is two different things.
So you can do following:
CREATE new table with same structure but engine you need.
copy(UPDATE) data from old table to the one you just created.
DROP old table.
RENAMErename new one to old name
It turned out that another process (a website) was using this database and had a couple of queries that got 'stuck' in the SQL server and caused the table to hang due to the database using the wrong engine, which I'm assuming was InnoDB since I didn't specify an engine when I initially used the "CREATE TABLE table1 AS SELECT * FROM table2" command. We finally managed to wipe the database and start over. Thanks for your help.
I've tried to execute the following ALTER TABLE statement:
ALTER TABLE `my_table` ADD COLUMN `new_column` LONGTEXT NULL DEFAULT NULL AFTER `old_column`;
During the execution of the script I've got
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.CommunicationsException: Communications link failure
It appears that this left database in inconsistent state, since no new field was added, and when I try to execute the script again, I'm getting this strange error.
com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.jdbc4.MySQLSyntaxErrorException: Table 'my_db/#sql-ib520' already exists
I do not have #sql-ib520 table in my database, so to my understanding it must be some temp table created by the MySQL.
Does anyone encountered this error before, and how could I solve it?
Thanx
Edit
I've tried the script suggested by Alex, but I had not worked:
drop table `#mysql50##sql-ib520`;
ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'my_db.#mysql50##sql-ib520'
Update
I'm using Amazon RDS with MySQL 5.6.12
I'm using an AWS RDS instance as well, and did a ton of reading on this problem. While I didn't find a great solution, here's how I fixed it by only replacing one table instead of the entire database.
If you run this command:
SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.INNODB_SYS_TABLES
you can see the full list of database tables, including the orphaned table, which isn't normally visible. The two problem tables for me were:
ID NAME
407 my_database/#sql-ib379
379 my_database/users
because I was attempting to ALTER my users table when the DB crashed. Now, as mentioned above, I couldn't run any further ALTER TABLE commands because it was trying to create the same temporary table for any subsequent queries. I tried everything to DROP the orphaned table, but with the 'my_database/' part, it didn't seem possible. I also didn't want to drop and recreate my entire database, and I noticed that the orphaned table is referencing an internal ID of the users table (#sql-ib379), so I figured I would just swap it out. Here's a little MySQL script that did the trick for me:
-- temporarily disable foreign key checks
SET foreign_key_checks = 0;
-- replace this line with query to create a structural copy of the users table
-- named users_copy, including foreign keys if you use them
-- copy everything from original table into new table
INSERT INTO `users_copy` SELECT * FROM `users`;
Make sure everything looks ok, and then run:
-- rename the existing table
RENAME TABLE `users` TO `users_backup`;
-- in case the copy process took some time, and there were additional rows added
-- to the original table, grab them and put them into the copy table
INSERT INTO `users_copy` SELECT * FROM `users_backup` WHERE `users_backup`.id > (SELECT MAX(id) FROM `users_copy`);
-- finally, rename the copy table to the original table name
RENAME TABLE `users_copy` TO `users`;
- re-enable foreign key checks
SET foreign_key_checks = 1;
If you are not using foreign keys, you should be good to go now. I would recommend keeping the backup table around for a bit just in case, but once you remove that backup table, it should remove the orphaned table as well. If you are using foreign keys however, it is very important that you update any references to the original table name (in this case, users)! Depending on how you have your foreign keys setup, other tables that were dependent on users will now reference users_backup, which could cause problems with lost data.
Hope this helps.
After all, since I'm using AWS RDS instance, the script recommended by Alex did not work.
MySQL documentation also recommends this script, you can find more info here about orphaned intermediate tables.
For AWS RDS I've found only one post with no solution provided by Amazon staff. You might want to follow this post in case some solution is provided.
So, at the moment, my only solution was to dump the existing database and create a new one.
I have this table in MYSQL databse which has about 10 million records/rows. I want to insert a new column in the table. However a simple insert column query doesn't seem to work well for me.
This is what I have tried,
ALTER TABLE contacts ADD processed INT(11);
I waited for about 5 hours, but nothing happened. Is there any way to insert a new column in such a huge table?
Hope I am clear with my question. Any help would be appreciated.
If it's production:
You should use pt-online-schema-change of Percona Toolkit.
pt-online-schema-change emulates the way that MySQL alters tables internally, but it works on a copy of the table you wish to alter. This means that the original table is not locked, and clients may continue to read and change data in it.
pt-online-schema-change works by creating an empty copy of the table to alter, modifying it as desired, and then copying rows from the original table into the new table. When the copy is complete, it moves away the original table and replaces it with the new one. By default, it also drops the original table.
Or oak-online-alter-table which is part of openark kit
oak-online-alter-table allows for non blocking ALTER TABLE operations, table rebuilds and creating a table's ghost.
Altering tables will be slower, but it doesn't lock tables.
If it's not production and downtime is okay, try this approach:
CREATE TABLE contacts_tmp LIKE contacts;
ALTER TABLE contacts_tmp ADD COLUMN ADD processed INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL;
INSERT INTO contacts_tmp (contact_table_fields) SELECT * FROM contacts;
RENAME TABLE contacts_tmp TO contacts, contacts TO contacts_old;
DROP TABLE contacts_old;
Is there a way to rename a column on an InnoDB table without a major alter?
The table is pretty big and I want to avoid major downtime.
Renaming a column (with ALTER TABLE ... CHANGE COLUMN) unfortunately requires MySQL to run a full table copy.
Check out pt-online-schema-change. This helps you to make many types of ALTER changes to a table without locking the whole table for the duration of the ALTER. You can continue to read and write the original table while it's copying the data into the new table. Changes are captured and applied to the new table through triggers.
Example:
pt-online-schema-change h=localhost,D=databasename,t=tablename \
--alter 'CHANGE COLUMN oldname newname NUMERIC(9,2) NOT NULL'
Update: MySQL 5.6 can do some types of ALTER operations without rebuilding the table, and changing the name of a column is one of those supported as an online change. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-overview.html for an overview of which types of alterations do or don't support this.
If there aren't any constraints on it, you can alter it without a hassle as far as I know. If there are you'll have to remove the constraints first, alter and add the constraints back.
Altering a table with many rows can take a long time (though if the columns involved are not indexed, it may be trivial).
If you specifically want to avoid using the ALTER TABLE syntax created specifically for that purpose, you can always create a table with almost the exact same structure (but different name) and copy all the data into it, like so:
CREATE TABLE `your_table2` ...;
-- (using the query from SHOW CREATE TABLE `your_table`,
-- but modified with your new column changes)
LOCK TABLES `your_table` WRITE;
INSERT INTO `your_table2` SELECT * FROM `your_table`;
RENAME TABLE `your_table` TO `your_table_old`, `your_table2` TO `your_table`;
For some ALTER TABLE queries, the above can be quite a bit faster. However, for a simple column name change, it could be trivial. I might try creating an identical table and performing the change on it in order to see how much time you're actually looking at.