How to add 'ON DELETE CASCADE' in ALTER TABLE statement

Solution 1:

You can not add ON DELETE CASCADE to an already existing constraint. You will have to drop and re-create the constraint. The documentation shows that the MODIFY CONSTRAINT clause can only modify the state of a constraint (i-e: ENABLED/DISABLED...).

Solution 2:

First drop your foreign key and try your above command, put add constraint instead of modify constraint. Now this is the command:

ALTER TABLE child_table_name 
  ADD CONSTRAINT fk_name 
  FOREIGN KEY (child_column_name) 
  REFERENCES parent_table_name(parent_column_name) 
  ON DELETE CASCADE;