title: Changing precision of numeric column in Oracle
body: <p>Currently I have a column that is declared as a NUMBER. I want to change the precision of the column to NUMBER(14,2). </p>
  
  <p>SO, I ran the command</p>
  
  <pre><code> alter table EVAPP_FEES modify AMOUNT NUMBER(14,2)'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>for which, I got an error : </p>
  
  <pre><code>   column to be modified must be empty to decrease precision or scale
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am guessing it wants the column to be empty while it changes the precision and I don't know why it says we want to decrease it while we are increasing it, the data in the columns can't be lost. Is there a short workaround for this? I don't want to copy it into another table and drop it afterwards, or rename a column and copy in between columns, because there is a risk of losing data between the transfers and drops.</p>