Q:

When you alter a table how do you detect the data type of columns?

I am running MySQL and I need to change the data type of certain columns from an enumeration to integer. However, there are a lot of columns. (If this exists) What is the syntax to alter all columns at the same time that are enumerations. Here is how I am updating a single column to make it integer data type:
ALTER TABLE table_name CHANGE column_name column_name INTEGER;

A:

SHOW COLUMNS FROM  WHERE TYPE LIKE  "%enum%"
you could afterwards iterate through your result similar to the solution described here:
http://se2.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-fetch-field.php#92069
hope this helps,
Michael

