An ALTER TABLE statement or a CREATE VIEW statement generates a table description either containing more columns than allowed or whose rows exceed the maximum length. Under certain circumstances, this situation can occur because of columns that are invisible to the user.
For a CREATE VIEW statement, check whether some output columns can be omitted. For an ALTER TABLE statement, check whether the specified column width can be decreased. Check also whether previous ALTER TABLE statements generated so many invisible columns that the MODIFY definition command should be used to remove invisible columns instead of the ALTER definition command. The effect would be the copying of the table, a procedure which requires considerable space and time.