How can I drop a “not null” constraint in Oracle when I don't know the name of the constraint?

Question

I have a database which has a NOT NULL constraint on a field, and I want to remove this constraint. The complicating factor is that this constraint has a system-defined nam

Answer 1

To discover any constraints used, use the code below:

-- Set the long data type for display purposes to 500000.

SET LONG 500000

-- Define a session scope variable.

VARIABLE output CLOB

-- Query the table definition through the DBMS_METADATA package.

SELECT dbms_metadata.get_ddl('TABLE','[Table Described]') INTO :output FROM dual;

This essentially shows a create statement for how the referenced table is made. By knowing how the table is created, you can see all of the table constraints.

Answer taken from Michael McLaughlin's blog: http://michaelmclaughlin.info/db1/lesson-5-querying-data/lab-5-querying-data/ From his Database Design I class.