For example, it is legal to change a column from SMALLINT to INTEGER using ALTER, but not from SMALLINT to DATE. In general, though, significant changes to the data type and length of a column usually ...

The ORDER BY clause causes the data to be presented in ascending order according to the table's FIBERNAME column. Both the WHERE ... of the individual EMPID values to change the values more easily.

Using default values on database columns helps to insulate database design issues from application code. You can change the default value of a column at some later date with a single ALTER TABLE ...