11GR2: column drop from large table

Hello ,

We are in  11.2.0.4 oracle database in Linux  6.6.        We have a table of around   30 million rows.      We need to drop a column from this table.    We are trying to  achieve this without downtime .   Please let us know the best way.

• Drop index which references the column
• alter table tablename  column   column_name to  column_name_backup
• alter table column_name_backup unused
• alter table drop unused columns checkpoint 10000;

Please let me know, if this will work .

Thanks

Ram