Changing a column postion from say 5th to 1st

Question

Hi there,
i need some help on changing a column position to a preferred
position.
Can an 'Alter' statement do it. Whether yes or no, how?
---My table
create table new_employee(
empno number(4),
ename varchar2(25),
job varchar2(15),
deptno number(2),
title varchar2(2)'
sex varchar(1)'
constraint pk_new_employee primary key (empno),
constraint fk_new_employee foreign key (deptno) references dept);
How can I make 'title' column become the first column.
Much appreciation in advance.
Ayo

Answer 1

The only way to physically change the order of columns in a
table is to drop the table and re-create it with the order you
want. This is, however, completely unneccessary. The physical
order of the columns is meaningless in Oracle. You can index on
any column or set of columns in any order regardless of where
they are in the physical order.
If you want to get title as the first column, you simply select
it first when you query the table.
SELECT title, empno, ename
FROM new_employee
The only time that the physical order of the columns matters is
when you do an insert statement without a column list. For
example, given your table, and the following data:
empno        123
ename        SMITH
job          CLERK
deptno       20
TITLE        SR. CLERK
SEX          M
This insert statement will work:
INSERT INTO new_employee
VALUES (123,'SMITH','CLERK',20,
        'SR. CLERK','M')
This one will not:
INSERT INTO new_employee
VALUES ('SR. CLERK',123,'SMITH','CLERK',
        20,'M')
This one will:
INSERT INTO new_employees
    (title,empno,ename,job,deptno,sex)
VALUES ('SR. CLERK',123,'SMITH','CLERK',
        20,'M')As long as you tell Oracle in which order the column values are
passed, you can populate the columns in any order.