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Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days, Second Edition
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Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days, Second Edition

by Lowell Mauer, David Solomon, Bennett McEwan
March 2001
Intermediate to advanced
640 pages
14h 9m
English
Sams
Content preview from Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days, Second Edition

Altering Tables

As your application development progresses, you might realize that you should have used a different length or data type. Or maybe you shouldn't have allowed NULL in a particular column. The ALTER TABLE command can be used to make these changes. In previous versions of SQL Server, you had to drop most objects and re-create them to make any changes. As I have already said, "Things change!" It's time to figure out how to modify and add new objects or settings to a table, and how to change what is already there. The ALTER TABLE command is used to perform this work. The syntax of the command is

ALTER TABLE table
{    [ [ALTER COLUMN column_name
        {     new_data_type [ (precision[, scale] ) ] [ NULL | NOT NULL ] | { ADD | DROP} ROWGUIDCOL } ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0672319675Purchase book