How to resolve ORA-01442 Error Message in Oracle database

Learn the motive and how to unravel the ORA-01442 error message in Oracle.

Description

When you stumble upon an ORA-01442 error, the following error message will appear:

ORA-01442: column to be modified to NOT NULL is already NOT NULL

You tried to execute a ALTER TABLE MODIFY declaration to exchange a column to NOT NULL, however the column is already set to NOT NULL.

The option(s) to resolve this Oracle error are:

Option #1

The ALTER TABLE statement is unnecessary seeing that your column is already set to NOT NULL.

For example, if you had a table referred to as suppliers described as follows:

CREATE TABLE suppliers
( supplier_id number(5) NOT NULL,
  supplier_name char(100)
);

And you tried to execute the following ALTER TABLE statement:

ALTER TABLE suppliers
 MODIFY supplier_id NOT NULL;

You would receive the following error message:

There is no treatment for this error in view that your table definition is equal to your ALTER TABLE statement.