Scribbles for my memory

IF statement won't work directly in standard SQL scripts outside of a stored procedure or function in MySQL. Thus, we will have to use a different approach using CREATE PROCEDURE to encapsulate the logic. Here’s an example that you can reference to create a stored procedure to safely make the changes:

DELIMITER //

CREATE PROCEDURE AdjustFilesTable()
BEGIN
    -- Change FileExt from char(4) to char(5) if it exists
    IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
        WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'Files' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'FileExt') > 0 THEN
        SET @sql = 'ALTER TABLE Files CHANGE COLUMN FileExt FileExt CHAR(5) NOT NULL';
        PREPARE stmt FROM @sql;
        EXECUTE stmt;
        DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
    END IF;

    -- Rename CreateAt to CreatedAt if it exists
    IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
        WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'Files' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'CreateAt') > 0 THEN
        SET @sql = 'ALTER TABLE Files CHANGE COLUMN CreateAt CreatedAt BIGINT DEFAULT NULL';
        PREPARE stmt FROM @sql;
        EXECUTE stmt;
        DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
    END IF;

    -- Rename UpdateAt to UpdatedAt if it exists
    IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
        WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'Files' AND COLUMN_NAME = 'UpdateAt') > 0 THEN
        SET @sql = 'ALTER TABLE Files CHANGE COLUMN UpdateAt UpdatedAt BIGINT DEFAULT NULL';
        PREPARE stmt FROM @sql;
        EXECUTE stmt;
        DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
    END IF;
END //

DELIMITER ;

-- Call the procedure to adjust the table
CALL AdjustFilesTable();

-- Optionally, drop the procedure afterwards
DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS AdjustFilesTable;

Explanation:

1. Stored Procedure Creation: We create a stored procedure named AdjustFilesTable that contains the logic to adjust the table.
2. Conditional Logic: Inside the procedure, we use IF statements to check for the existence of each column before attempting to alter it.
3. Dynamic SQL Execution: We prepare, execute, and deallocate the statements as needed.
4. Calling the Procedure: After creating the procedure, we call it to perform the adjustments.
5. Cleanup: Optionally, you can drop the procedure afterward to prevent clutter.

Note:

• Make sure you have the necessary permissions to create procedures in your MySQL environment.

You might already know that Oracle regular expression doesn't support \b. However, we need it. So the answer is

(^|\W)yourstring(\W|$)

Reference

I met this issue when I SELECT CASE WHEN d.COUNTRY != 'AU' THEN 'Australia' ELSE countries.NAME END

BTW, I asked ChatGPT for help about this issue but unfortunately I didn't get a good answer.
One of the correct answers was

SELECT CASE WHEN d.COUNTRY != 'AU' THEN 'Australia' ELSE TO_CHAR(countries.NAME) END ...

I found the above answer myself and I told ChatGPT this answer. It replied

Great to hear that you were able to solve the issue! Yes, you can use the TO_CHAR function to convert the character set of the countries.NAME column to match the character set of your database. This is a common solution for character set mismatch errors. Using TO_CHAR function, you can explicitly specify the character set you want to convert to, like this:

TO_CHAR(countries.NAME, 'NLS_CHARACTERSET')

where 'NLS_CHARACTERSET' is the character set of your database. By default, Oracle uses the database's character set for character data that has no specified character set, so if you don't specify a character set for TO_CHAR, it will use the database's character set.

another answer is to use the CAST function in PL/SQL, here's an example from stackoverflow.com