4-updatefield.md

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Updating Fields

You can alter tables after they've been created. The SQL syntax below adds another field to the existing table and then populates that field with data.

ALTER TABLE programs    --selects the "programs" table to update
ADD program_level VARCHAR;    --adds a "program_level" column, which is a string

By the way, in the example above, the words after the '--' symbols are comments, and don't affect the query. You do not have to include the comments in your code.

Next, add another field for program_level to the existing table, using the SQL code above.

Now, let's populate the new empty "program_level" field with some data.

UPDATE programs		--select the table to update
SET program_level = "Ph.D."		--select the field and value to update
WHERE program_name = 'Linguistics';		--select the condition for updating

And now we have:

id          program_name  program_level
----------  ------------  -------------
1           Anthropology
2           Biology
3           Linguistics   Ph.D.

Challenge

Update the program_level field for Biology and Anthropology with Master's.

Hint: You can do this with one statement using IN. The solution is here.

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