How to move columns in a MySQL table?

Question

Currently I am having the following MySQL table: Employees (empID, empName, department);

I want to change the table to the following: Employees (e

Answer 1

I had to run this for a column introduced in the later stages of a product, on 10+ tables. So wrote this quick untidy script to generate the alter command for all 'relevant' tables.

SET @NeighboringColumn = '';

SELECT CONCAT("ALTER TABLE `",t.TABLE_NAME,"` CHANGE COLUMN `",COLUMN_NAME,"` 
`",COLUMN_NAME,"` ", c.DATA_TYPE, CASE WHEN c.CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH IS NOT 
NULL THEN CONCAT("(", c.CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH, ")") ELSE "" END ,"  AFTER 
`",@NeighboringColumn,"`;")
FROM information_schema.COLUMNS c, information_schema.TABLES t
WHERE c.TABLE_SCHEMA = ''
AND c.COLUMN_NAME = ''
AND c.TABLE_SCHEMA = t.TABLE_SCHEMA
AND c.TABLE_NAME = t.TABLE_NAME
AND t.TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
AND @NeighboringColumn IN (SELECT COLUMN_NAME 
    FROM information_schema.COLUMNS c2 
    WHERE c2.TABLE_NAME = t.TABLE_NAME);