For adding a column (attribute) to an existing table, we use the MODIFY statement in MySQL.

For example, suppose that I have a table named student. The student table contains 3 columns (attributes) named name, id and cgpa. Now I want to add one more column named phone_number there.

Then the MySQL command would be:

ALTER TABLE student ADD phone_number VARCHAR(12);

Now let me explain each keyword. As I want to alter a table that is already been created, I used the ALTER keyword. Then the question comes which thing I want to alter; is it a table or database or anything else? The answer is I want to alter a particular table.

Therefore I used ALTER TABLE. A database can have multiple tables in it. I need to spcify the exact table where I want to make the alteration. Therefore, I stated the table name there. Then comes the part exactly which type of alteration I want to apply.

As I want to add a new column, I have stated that in my command. Then I stated my new attribute (column) name and the data type with it.

After finishing the statement, I used a semicolon to specify that the statement is finished.

That is how the query command works!

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