> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://cockroachlabs.mintlify.site/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# ALTER EXTERNAL CONNECTION
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The `ALTER EXTERNAL CONNECTION` statement allows you to change the [storage/sink](#supported-external-storage-and-sinks) URI that an external connection references.
You can use external connections to specify and interact with resources that are external to CockroachDB. When creating an external connection, you must define a name for the external connection while passing the provider URI and query parameters.
You can use `ALTER EXTERNAL CONNECTION` to update the connection string for an external connection to use a new authentication token. This allows you to rotate your auth token before the old token expires.
You can also use the following SQL statements to work with external connections:
* `CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `SHOW EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `SHOW CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `DROP EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
## Required privileges
To update an external connection, a user must have the `UPDATE` privilege on that connection.
For example:
```sql theme={"theme":{"light":"catppuccin-mocha","dark":"catppuccin-mocha"}}
GRANT UPDATE ON EXTERNAL CONNECTION backup_bucket TO user;
```
## Synopsis
### Parameters
| Parameter | Description |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `connection\_name` | The name of the existing external connection. |
| `connection\_uri` | The new [storage/sink](#supported-external-storage-and-sinks) URI that the external connection will be updated to reference. |
## Supported external storage and sinks
| Storage or sink | Operation support |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| Amazon MSK | Changefeeds |
| Amazon S3 | Backups, restores, imports, exports, changefeeds |
| Amazon S3 KMS | Encrypted backups |
| Azure Storage | Backups, restores, imports, exports, changefeeds |
| Confluent Cloud | Changefeeds |
| Confluent Schema Registry | Changefeeds |
| Google Cloud Pub/Sub | Changefeeds |
| Google Cloud Storage | Backups, restores, imports, exports, changefeeds |
| Google Cloud Storage KMS | Encrypted backups |
| HTTP(S) | Changefeeds |
| Kafka | Changefeeds |
| Nodelocal | Backups, restores, imports, exports, changefeeds |
| PostgreSQL connections | Physical cluster replication |
| Userfile | Backups, restores, imports, exports, changefeeds |
| Webhook | Changefeeds |
For more information on authentication and forming the URI that an external connection will represent, refer to the storage or sink pages linked in the table.
## Examples
### Update the URI of an external connection
In this example, you update the `backup_bucket` external connection to a new Amazon S3 URI to rotate your auth token.
```sql theme={"theme":{"light":"catppuccin-mocha","dark":"catppuccin-mocha"}}
ALTER EXTERNAL CONNECTION backup_bucket AS 's3://bucket name?AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID={new access key}&AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY={new secret access key}';
```
## See also
* `CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `DROP EXTERNAL CONNECTION`
* `SHOW CREATE EXTERNAL CONNECTION`