Cannot alter compressed tables in Hue

Due to a known bug in the Oracle database (12c and higher), you cannot perform ALTER TABLE operations (add, delete, drop, modify) on compressed tables. If you have compressed tables in the Hue schema, then you may see the “ORA-39726: unsupported add/drop column operation on compressed tables” error.

Even if you uncompress an existing table, you may not be allowed to alter the columns. To resolve this issue:
  1. SSH into the host on which you have installed the Oracle database.
  2. Create a new uncompressed table with the same structure as the compressed table.
  3. Copy the data from the compressed table to the new uncompressed table.
  4. Rename or delete the compressed table.
  5. Rename the uncompressed table with the name of the original compressed table.
You should now be able to perform ALTER TABLE operations (add, delete, drop, modify) on the Hue tables.