---
title: "PATCH /v1/{+database}/ddl"
method: PATCH
path: "/v1/{+database}/ddl"
tags: ["projects"]
---

# PATCH /v1/{+database}/ddl

`PATCH /v1/{+database}/ddl`

Updates the schema of a Cloud Spanner database by creating/altering/dropping tables, columns, indexes, etc. The returned long-running operation will have a name of the format `/operations/` and can be used to track execution of the schema changes. The metadata field type is UpdateDatabaseDdlMetadata. The operation has no response.

## Path parameters

- `database` string, required

## Request body

- UpdateDatabaseDdlRequest — Enqueues the given DDL statements to be applied, in order but not necessarily all at once, to the database schema at some point (or points) in the future. The server checks that the statements are executable (syntactically valid, name tables that exist, etc.) before enqueueing them, but they may still fail upon later execution (for example, if a statement from another batch of statements is applied first and it conflicts in some way, or if there is some data-related problem like a `NULL` value in a column to which `NOT NULL` would be added). If a statement fails, all subsequent statements in the batch are automatically cancelled. Each batch of statements is assigned a name which can be used with the Operations API to monitor progress. See the operation_id field for more details.
  - `statements` string[] — Required. DDL statements to be applied to the database.
  - `operationId` string — If empty, the new update request is assigned an automatically-generated operation ID. Otherwise, `operation_id` is used to construct the name of the resulting Operation. Specifying an explicit operation ID simplifies determining whether the statements were executed in the event that the UpdateDatabaseDdl call is replayed, or the return value is otherwise lost: the database and `operation_id` fields can be combined to form the `name` of the resulting longrunning.Operation: `/operations/`. `operation_id` should be unique within the database, and must be a valid identifier: `a-z*`. Note that automatically-generated operation IDs always begin with an underscore. If the named operation already exists, UpdateDatabaseDdl returns `ALREADY_EXISTS`.
  - `protoDescriptors` string, byte — Optional. Proto descriptors used by CREATE/ALTER PROTO BUNDLE statements. Contains a protobuf-serialized [google.protobuf.FileDescriptorSet](https://github.com/protocolbuffers/protobuf/blob/main/src/google/protobuf/descriptor.proto). To generate it, [install](https://grpc.io/docs/protoc-installation/) and run `protoc` with --include_imports and --descriptor_set_out. For example, to generate for moon/shot/app.proto, run ``` $protoc --proto_path=/app_path --proto_path=/lib_path \ --include_imports \ --descriptor_set_out=descriptors.data \ moon/shot/app.proto ``` For more details, see protobuffer [self description](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/techniques#self-description).

## Response `200`

Successful response

---

[API](https://skmtc.net/google/apis/spanner.md) · [All operations](https://skmtc.net/google/apis/spanner/llms.txt) · [OpenAPI document](https://skmtc-service-staging.skmtc.workers.dev/v1/apis/google/spanner/versions/4b66067d2622/schema)