RENAME

Purpose

Caution: You cannot roll back a RENAME statement.

Use the RENAME statement to rename a table, view, sequence, or private synonym.

• Oracle automatically transfers integrity constraints, indexes, and grants on the old object to the new object.
• Oracle invalidates all objects that depend on the renamed object, such as views, synonyms, and stored procedures and functions that refer to a renamed table.

  See Also: CREATE SYNONYM and DROP SYNONYM

Prerequisites

The object must be in your own schema.

Syntax

rename::=

Text description of rename

Keywords and Parameters

old_name

Specify the name of an existing table, view, sequence, or private synonym.

new_name

Specify the new name to be given to the existing object. The new name must not already be used by another schema object in the same namespace and must follow the rules for naming schema objects.

Restrictions on renaming objects:

• You cannot rename a public synonym. Instead, drop the public synonym and then re-create the public synonym with the new name.
• You cannot rename a type synonym that has any dependent tables or dependent valid user-defined object types.

  See Also: "Schema Object Naming Rules"

Example

Renaming a Database Object: Example

The following example uses a copy of the sample table hr.departments. To change the name of table departments_new to emp_departments, issue the following statement:

RENAME departments_new TO emp_departments;

You cannot use this statement directly to rename columns. However, you can rename a column using the ALTER TABLE ... rename_column_clause.

See Also: rename_column_clause

Another way to rename a column is to use the RENAME statement together with the CREATE TABLE statement with AS subquery. This method is useful is you are changing the structure of a table rather than only renaming a column. The following statements re-create the sample table hr.job_history, renaming a column from department_id to dept_id:

CREATE TABLE temporary 
   (employee_id, start_date, end_date, job_id, dept_id) 
AS SELECT 
     employee_id, start_date, end_date, job_id, department_id
FROM job_history; 

DROP TABLE job_history; 

RENAME temporary TO job_history; 

Note: Any integrity constraints defined on table job_history will be lost in the preceding example. You will have to redefine them on the new job_history table using an ALTER TABLE statement.