Available in versions: Dev (3.20) | Latest (3.19) | 3.18 | 3.17 | 3.16 | 3.15 | 3.14 | 3.13 | 3.12 | 3.11 | 3.10

ALTER TABLE .. ADD FOREIGN KEY

Applies to ✅ Open Source Edition   ✅ Express Edition   ✅ Professional Edition   ✅ Enterprise Edition

All constraint types can be added with the ALTER TABLE statement. This includes FOREIGN KEY constraints:

// Adding an unnamed constraint to a table
create.alterTable("table").add(foreignKey("author_id").references("author")).execute();

// Adding a named constraint to a table
create.alterTable("table").add(constraint("fk").foreignKey("author_id").references("author")).execute();
It is recommended to always provide a name with a constraint to simplify schema management. See also this section of the manual

Dialect support

This example using jOOQ:

alterTable("t").add(constraint("pk").foreignKey("author_id").references("author"))

Translates to the following dialect specific expressions:

ASE, Access, Aurora MySQL, Aurora Postgres, ClickHouse, CockroachDB, DB2, Derby, Exasol, Firebird, H2, HSQLDB, Hana, MariaDB, MemSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, Redshift, SQLDataWarehouse, SQLServer, Snowflake, Sybase, Teradata, Vertica, YugabyteDB

ALTER TABLE t ADD CONSTRAINT pk FOREIGN KEY (author_id) REFERENCES author

Informix

ALTER TABLE t ADD CONSTRAINT FOREIGN KEY (author_id) REFERENCES author CONSTRAINT pk

BigQuery, DuckDB, SQLite, Trino

/* UNSUPPORTED */
Generated with jOOQ 3.20. Translate your own SQL on our website

Feedback

Do you have any feedback about this page? We'd love to hear it!

The jOOQ Logo