Also, use the information_schema.columns
Brett
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how to change column datatype
(almost) All tables in my db have a column named Who, that is used to stored the update user's id. the data type is nvarchar(20). I want to change it to smallint in ALL tables.
I don;t have to worry about the data that is already present. i can delete the column and re-create it with the changed datatype.
I could do it manually for each table using ALTER TABLE statement. (DROP first then ADD).
1 - I was wondering if i can do this programatically using T-SQL.
2 - How good/bad idea is it to manually edit the 'syscolumns' table ?
I tried following statements but looks like i can not pass a variable to ALTER TABLE statment.
ALTER TABLE @TableName DROP Column Who
ALTER TABLE @TableName ADD Who smallint NULL
where @TableName is declared as nvarchar(255) and is filled from the sysobjects table's Name column for Type='U'.
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by: arbertPosted on 2004-05-09 at 18:06:44ID: 11027753
NEVER edit the system tables--very bad idea.
You can use dynamic sql for what you want:
declare @sql varchar(1000)
select @sql='alter table ' + @tablename ' + ' drop column who'
exec (@sql)
Brett