Default constraints

Hello

I have about 40 tables where I need to increase the size of the admission number field from smallint to Int . The field used the tables' primary key or part of the key. I am a programmer, but fairly new to SQL Server. I have written some scripts to remove the defaults and primary key constraints off of this field in each table, do the field resize and then put the constraints back on. The scripts get the names and settings of the constraints from system tables before the constraints are dropped, so that they can be reapplied after the field size change.

Is this the best way to do it? Or should I be looking at a DTS package?

I would be grateful for your advice

Shirley

To me (unless you have a database design tool), this sounds like a sufficient way to do it. It is never perfectly easy or anything, but you can get most everything you need to generate a script using the system tables, so I would do that. Sounds messy of course, since you also have to deal with foreign key constraints, but if it is just 40 tables, that probably isn't too bad. (I assume you will make ths size plenty big for the next sixty years this time :)

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Thanks very much for that. Yes, Integer will definitely be a big enough field size for the forseeable future for our admission number!

Shirley