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Showing posts from November, 2015

SQLcl Aliases & The Invisible Column Trick

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SQLcl is the bee's knees. Problem Today I had a common problem. I wanted to reposition a column within a table. "Oh you should use views!"  "Never reference a table directly!"  "Column position should be meaningless!" I hear you shout. Yes but, look at this table definition. PERSON table FIRSTNAME ,ADDRESS,PHONE, LASTNAME Doesn't that drive you mad.  I want the order FIRSTNAME, LASTNAME , ADDRESS, PHONE Or worse. You decide to add a new column  (middlename) to your table definition script. create table person (firstname varchar2(100),                             middlename varchar2(100),                                  lastname varchar2(100),                                     address varchar2(100),                                       phone varchar2(100)); But you need to update the table right now alter table person add (middlename varchar2(100)); Your table definition sc