In article <11mpunradsa5ma5@corp.supernews.com>,
gordonb.s920x@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) writes:

>> My point was that that the DB should disallow an ALTER TABLE if there
>> are column values longer than the new length specification. Silently
>> "losing some data" is not what a DB should do.

> Then there should be an ALTER TABLE DAMMIT (or perhaps ALTER TABLE IGNORE)
> to allow doing it anyway. *silently* losing data is bad. Refusing
> to make a necessary change is also bad.

You don't need an ALTER TABLE IGNORE - just do an

UPDATE mytbl SET col = left (col, <newlen>)

before ALTER TABLE.