Creating a new column with SQL

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

Hi everybody

I am working on an online game, but I am running into some trouble.
As the database is getting heavy, right now 4,5 megabyte, I can't download the database evrytime I want to make some changes.

Therefore I would like to know, if there are any SQL statements that will create a new column in the database.

I suppose that the statement would be something like:

CREATE COLUMN referer SET defualt.value = 'NONE'

but I don't think that that one would work anyhow...

Can someone help me out here? I really hope that you can.

If you are interested in seing the game, it can be found at:
http://www.secretsofwar.vze.com (it is still under construction though)

Kind regards, and thanks in advance
~Casper Bang

Peter J. Boettcher's picture

They have: 812 posts

Joined: Feb 2000

Casper,

I'm not sure which platform you're using but for Microsoft SQL 6.5-2000 the syntax is:

ALTER TABLE table_name
ADD column_name column_type value

for example:

ALTER TABLE Games ADD Game_Title VARCHAR(20) NULL

It's probably similar on other platforms.

PJ | Are we there yet?
pjboettcher.com

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

Thanks Peter

I will look at it, and see if I can make it work.

Kind regards
~Casper

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

Tested it out, and it worked perfectly! Thanks a lot again! You spared my connection for a lot Wink

See yóu
¨~Casper

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

I ran into another problem regarding this!

I know wants to make a new row, that is in memo type, so that you can have ALL the data you wants in the cells.

How do I do that?

I suppose its something like:
ALTER TABLE Games ADD Game_Title VARCHAR(memo) NULL

But I aint sure on that... I REALLY hope that you can help me here!

Thanks in advance
Casper

Peter J. Boettcher's picture

They have: 812 posts

Joined: Feb 2000

Casper,

The memo field type in SQL is TEXT. So the statement would be:

ALTER TABLE Games ADD Game_Title TEXT NULL

Try not to use to many TEXT fields since they aren't super efficient.

PJ | Are we there yet?
pjboettcher.com

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

Thanks for that!

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

By the way, what do you mean that they are not effecient? Is it just because that they are heavy in the data weight, or is there a more specifik reason?

Peter J. Boettcher's picture

They have: 812 posts

Joined: Feb 2000

Casper,

The text field is inefficient in two ways:

1) It requires more memory overhead than a char or varchar type field.

2) Indexing/Searching is slower through a text field compared to a char or varchar field.

If you know you're not going to exceed 6,000-8,000 characters I would recommend going with a varchar data type instead of text.

PJ | Are we there yet?
pjboettcher.com

They have: 133 posts

Joined: Sep 2000

I don't know how much information there will be, so I better keep it as a text field.
Thanks anyway

If you want to see what I am using it for, here is the URL http://www.secretsofwar.net Just if you were curius.

~Casper

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