<a id="ksqldb-reference-alter-system"></a>

# ALTER SYSTEM statement in ksqlDB for Confluent Platform

## Synopsis

```sql
ALTER SYSTEM '<config-name>'='<value>';
```

## Description

Sets and modifies the value of system-level configs. These are
properties that are applied to all queries in the cluster. Using
`ALTER SYSTEM` results in the new value being applied immediately
across the cluster and restarts the shared runtime to take effect for
existing queries.

To use the `ALTER SYSTEM` statement, the
`ksql.runtime.feature.shared.enabled` configuration setting must be
`true`.

`ALTER SYSTEM` is available only from the `ksql` command line and
only when connected to a ksqlDB cluster in Confluent Cloud.

## Example

The following statement sets the streams property `auto.offset.reset`
to begin at the `earliest` record in the input topics when no
committed offsets are found.

```sql
ALTER SYSTEM 'auto.offset.reset'='earliest';
```