Version 8.2 on Linux.
Background: I have not used db2 since 7.1 and earlier.
Question: Can DB2 now allow you to expand a column in place, if not which is a smoother transition, adding a new column and moving the data to the new column and then renaming the column and dropping the old column. Or creating a new tablewith the expanded column and importing the data, then re-naming the table.

Depends what data type and if you have any RI or other ref linked to it.

If you decide to go with new object. then:
1. create new table.
2. load from cursor from old to new.
3. rename old.
4. rename new.
5. test
6. drop old

If by expand, you mean make larger, like increasing the size of a varchar, then you can do that kind of thing in place with just the ALTER TABLE command.

Andy

More information. After digging around and drawing back db2 commands with cob webs attached. The table is actually only has two columns with no primary key or indexes. both columns are char(25) and both nullable. The column that I need to expand is the last column in the table.

old: column name CHAR(25)
new column name CHAR(50).

This can be complete by altering the column in place.

Yes. have you looked at the SQL Ref 2 manual as Andy suggested?

alter table tabschema.tabname alter column col2 set DATA TYPE char(4)"

You can alter only VARCHAR columns; the record size does not change right away; but you CANNOT alter CHAR columns because then each record has to change causing all kinds of havoc.

Strange, because I did just that yesterday.

Cougar,
The OP is on V 8.2 and the only thing you could alter was varchar. It has changed in V9 and beyond.

Andy

How many records were there in the table? Was there an index?how long did it take to make the change?

I guess I missed db2 level. Thank you.

Does it really matter in this case? Yes, there considerations that have to be taken into account.