title: Alter table to modify column type not terminating
body: <p>I'm new to SQL and have a test table in a database. I realized that my previous title size allocation was too small, so I want to increase it from a VARCHAR(120) to VARCHAR(500) by running the following command:</p>
  
  <p><code>ALTER TABLE test MODIFY title VARCHAR(500);</code></p>
  
  <p>But that statement never terminates, even though the table contains less than 20 entries.</p>
  
  <p>Am I missing something here?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: I was basing that command off of <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1356866/how-do-i-change-the-data-type-for-a-column-in-mysql">these answers</a>, but I've also tried:</p>
  
  <p><code>ALTER TABLE test MODIFY COLUMN title VARCHAR(500);</code></p>
  
  <p>Which doesn't terminate either.</p>