Hi list,

I need to alter table in order to increase the size of a column from char(10) to char(18). I feel the change should be able to done nearly instaneously. But when I tested on a table w/o about 1 million rows, it took quite a while to run. And when it was running, I can't even open the current activities on that server. Instead, I got 'error 1222, lock request time out period exceeded.'

So does it mean this alter statement will lock the whole table?

BTW -- how do I know if a DML/DDL will pose lock on the table/database etc. And if yes, what kind of lock?

Thanks,
Elaine







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