ALTER TABLE RENAME - Rename Columns

The ALTER command is a DDL command to modify the structure of existing tables in the database by adding, modifying, renaming, or dropping columns and constraints. Use the ALTER TABLE RENAME command to rename column names.

Syntax:

ALTER TABLE table_name RENAME COLUMN old_column_name TO new_column_name;

For the demo purpose, consider the following Employee table.

EmpId	FirstName	LastName	Email	PhoneNo	Salary	Address	PinCode

The following SQL script will rename PinCode to ZipCode in the Employee table in Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite database.

SQL Script: Rename Column

ALTER TABLE Employee RENAME COLUMN PinCode TO ZipCode;

Use the built-in procedure sp_rename to changes the name of a user-created object in the database such as tables, indexes, columns, and alias data types in MS SQL Server. The following renames PinCode to ZipCode.

SQL Script: Rename Column in SQL Server

EXEC sp_rename 'Employee.PinCode', 'Employee.ZipCode';

The above ALTER TABLE RENAME SQL script will change the Employee table as below.

EmpId	FirstName	LastName	Email	PhoneNo	Salary	Address	ZipCode

You cannot rename muliple columns in a single rename statement. Use different rename script to rename multiple columns.

The following RENAME script renames multiple column names.

SQL Script: Rename Multiple Columns

ALTER TABLE Employee 
RENAME COLUMN FirstName TO First_Name;

ALTER TABLE Employee 
RENAME COLUMN PhoneNo TO Phone;