ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis at query ALTER TABLE Table_Name MODIFY Column_Name

Question

I have a database where I want to execute this SQL query:

ALTER TABLE PARAM_DEF MODIFY UNIT VARCHAR2(400 BYTES);

In SQL Server it works without any problem but in Oracle I get this error:

Error report -
SQL Error: ORA-00907: missing right parenthesis
00907. 00000 -  "missing right parenthesis"

Why does it not work at my Oracle database?

Answer 1

The keywords for character length semantics are CHAR and BYTE - not BYTES , so just correct that to:

ALTER TABLE PARAM_DEF MODIFY UNIT VARCHAR2(400 BYTE);

Demo:

create table param_def (unit varchar2(200 byte));

Table PARAM_DEF created.

ALTER TABLE PARAM_DEF MODIFY UNIT VARCHAR2(400 BYTE);

Table PARAM_DEF altered.

desc param_def

Name Null? Type          
---- ----- ------------- 
UNIT       VARCHAR2(400) 

Answer 2

Remove bytes in varchar2

   ALTER TABLE PARAM_DEF MODIFY 
   UNIT VARCHAR2(400);