Adding a column to large table

[netfrugal]

I know that when I use the ALTER TABLE command I'm remaking the table, as well as copying over existing data from the current table.

I'm curious if anyone has some alternatives (though I don't expect it) to adding a column to very large tables quickly.

I honestly don't believe there's a quick way. Essentially, it's important to design the database tables correctly from the beginning. But we do have hiccups, from time to time 🙂

[Weedpacket]

Does it need to be very quick if it only happens "from time to time"? For one thing, if you'd just gone ahead and did it you'd be finished by now 🙂, and any reasonable DBMS would not have to interrupt service to perform the alteration (it would create a new altered table and then switch over to it; PostgreSQL doesn't even bother with that if the default value is null).

[dagon]

in the last week I have probably run alter table over ten thousand times (916 dbs, 16 tables in each) with out an issue. I'ts still under development, but the live users didn't notice anything (i hope).