SQL Alter Column Name

Question

I am trying to change the name of a column in my Oracle database using SQL PLUS. This is what I'm doing:
ALTER TABLE projects
RENAME COLUMN thomas_comp_type TO thomas_comp_shipped_via;
When I do this it gives me an error stating ORA-14155 Missing PARTITION or SUBPARTITION keyword.
What does this mean and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

Hang on: you're trying to rename a column called NAME?
That's one of Oracle's reserved keywords so should never have been used as a column name in the first place:
SQL> select * from v$reserved_words where keyword like 'NAME';
KEYWORD                            LENGTH R R R R D
NAME                                    4 N N N N NThat said, you are able to do such a rename without an issue in 10g:
SQL> create table t1 (name varchar2(10));
Table created.
SQL> alter table t1 rename column name to fred;
Table altered.
SQL> desc t1;
Name                                      Null?    Type
FRED                                               VARCHAR2(10)Oracle 9i is obviously a different matter ...and it doesn't help that it's such an old version, because I don't have a machine running that to hand to test things out on. You could try double-quoting the column name:
SQL> alter table t1 rename column "FRED"  to barney;
Table altered.But I can't guarantee that will work.