ALTER ... RENAME

New in v0.4.0.

ALTER ... RENAME renames an item, albeit with some limitations.

Note that renaming schemas and databases are in development. (#3680)

Syntax

Details

Because of Materialize’s SQL engine, we currently only support renaming items in limited contexts.

Rename-able limitations

You cannot rename items if:

• They are not uniquely qualified among all references to their identifier in all dependent views.

  For example, if you have:

  • Two views named v1 in two different databases (d1, d2), but they both use the same schema name (s1)
  • Both views named v1 are used in another view’s query

  You can only rename either view named v1 if every dependent view’s query that contains references to both views fully qualifies all references, e.g.

  CREATE VIEW v2 AS
  SELECT *
  FROM db1.s1.v1
  JOIN db2.s1.v1
  ON db1.s1.v1.a = db2.s1.v1
  

  If these two views were placed in schemas using distinct identifiers, you would only need to qualify their references with schemas instead of databases and schemas.

• Any dependent query references a database, schema, or column that uses the same identifier.

  In the following examples, v1 could not be renamed:

  CREATE VIEW v3 AS
  SELECT *
  FROM v1
  JOIN v2
  ON v1.a = v2.v1
  

  CREATE VIEW v4 AS
  SELECT *
  FROM v1
  JOIN v1.v2
  ON v1.a = v2.a
  

New name limitations

You cannot rename an item to any identifier used in a dependent query, whether that identifier is used implicitly or explicitly.

Consider this example:

CREATE VIEW v5 AS
SELECT *
FROM d1.s1.v2
JOIN v1
ON v1.a = v2.b

You could not rename v1 to:

• a
• b
• v2
• s1
• d1
• materialize or public (implicitly referenced by materialize.public.v1 using the default database and schema)

However, you could rename v1 to any other legal identifier.

Examples

SHOW VIEWS;

 VIEWS
-------
 v1

ALTER VIEW v1 RENAME TO v2;
SHOW VIEWS;

 VIEWS
-------
 v2

See also

• SHOW CREATE VIEW
• SHOW VIEWS
• SHOW SOURCES
• SHOW INDEXES
• SHOW SINKS