Github user ChinmaySKulkarni commented on the issue: https://github.com/apache/phoenix/pull/304 Ran into [PHOENIX-3167](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PHOENIX-3167) when doing some testing for this JIRA. This can be a bigger problem now that we force an upgrade in case column families are out of sync for a table. Steps to repro: create table test (id INTEGER not null primary key, name varchar(10)) TTL=1200,KEEP_DELETED_CELLS='false',REPLICATION_SCOPE='1'; alter table test add cf1.random varchar(10); -> New column family cf1 inherits TTL, KEEP_DELETED_CELLS and REPLICATION_SCOPE properties alter table test set TTL=100000; create table if not exists test (id INTEGER not null primary key, name varchar(10)) TTL=1200,KEEP_DELETED_CELLS='false',REPLICATION_SCOPE='1'; -> Modifies HBase metadata for the table so TTL for default cf is changed to 1200, whereas newly added cf1's TTL is still 100000. With this patch, at this point, any future alter table command or create index will fail with UpgradeRequiredException since column family properties are out of sync. Even if we run the second create table with 'if not exists', same behavior. Similar problem is seen with alter table for global index. See [PHOENIX-4743](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PHOENIX-4743) @twdsilva @vincentpoon
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