Drop a Column and its Constraints and Indexes

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Drop a Column and its Constraints and Indexes

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Andy B.

Posted Saturday, September 29, 2007 2:49 PM

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Drop a Column and its Constraints and Indexes

Enjoy!

A Brown

Manage all of your backups in one simple job using this script.

Post #404473

Tech_Newbie

Posted Tuesday, May 20, 2008 9:37 AM

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PLEASE HELP: I AM TRYING TO USE THE FOLLOWING SCRIPT TO :

1. FOR EACH TABLE IN A GIVEN DATABASE (I am using a cursor for this)
2. FIND IF A COLUMN OF NAME "row_id" exists
3. IF it does, delete it
4. if it doesnt, proceed to next table

Right now I am getting error messages when it comes to a table where the column does not exist, it simply stops because the drop statement fails - what am I doing wrong ???????????????????????????

code:

--ALTER TABLES SCRIPT
--change the line marked *** to suit your update needs....

IF EXISTS (SELECT *
FROM sysobjects o WITH(NOLOCK),
syscolumns b WITH(NOLOCK)
WHERE o.[id] = b.[id] AND b.name = 'row_id'
AND O.name = ''+o.name)
BEGIN
DECLARE tableNamesCursor CURSOR
FOR
--***
--select 'ALTER TABLE ['+ o.name+ '] ADD row_id as '+o.name+'+'ID'
-- CONSTRAINT AddDateDflt'+ cast(o.id as varchar(10))+ ' DEFAULT getdate() WITH VALUES'
-- removes the TimeStamp column, and constraint from all tables

select 'ALTER TABLE ['+ o.name+ '] DROP COLUMN row_id'
from sysobjects o, sysindexes i
where i.id = o.id
and indid in(0,1)
and o.name not like 'sys%'
and o.name not like 'dt%'
order by o.name

OPEN tableNamesCursor
DECLARE @alterTableSql nvarchar(400)
FETCH NEXT FROM tableNamesCursor INTO @alterTableSql
WHILE (@@FETCH_STATUS <> -1)
BEGIN
IF (@@FETCH_STATUS <> -2)
BEGIN
print @alterTableSql
exec sp_executesql @alterTableSql
END
FETCH NEXT FROM tableNamesCursor INTO @alterTableSql
END
CLOSE tableNamesCursor
DEALLOCATE tableNamesCursor
END

Post #503824

Lau-765114

Posted Friday, May 30, 2008 2:59 PM

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Andy's script is great but not so clean.

I ran it against a SQL2000 database trying to drop a column along with all its constraints/indexes. Here are the issues I faced:

1. The criteria of the constraints cursor should be changed to

WHERE ((OBJECTPROPERTY(Cons.[id],'IsConstraint') = 1
					OR (OBJECTPROPERTY(Cons.[id],'IsPrimaryKey') = 1))
					AND Cons.info = Cols.colid)
			  AND Cons.parent_obj = @tableID

as you don’t want to drop the primary key if the given column is not part of it.

2. The join criteria for the sysindexes table in the indexes cursor should include a fourth line as follows:

INNER JOIN dbo.sysindexkeys SIK WITH (NOLOCK)
				ON  SIK.id = SC.id
				AND SIK.colid = SC.colid
				AND SIK.indid = SI.indid

otherwise the cursor will return duplicate rows.

3. The second line of the where criteria of the indexes cursor must be changed as follows:

WHERE SI.indid !=0
			  AND ISNULL(OBJECTPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID(SI.name),'IsConstraint'), 0) = 0
			  AND SC.id = @tableID
			  AND SC.name = @column

as many (valid) rows return a NULL value there

4. The statement that drops the index should be:

SELECT @sql = N'DROP INDEX '+@table+'.'+@index

5. The commit/rollback block should be:

IF @@TRANCOUNT > 0
	BEGIN
		IF @rollback = 0
			COMMIT TRANSACTION
		ELSE
			ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
	END

as you want to commit/rollback only if a transaction has been started.

These are all the things I had to change in order to have the script running properly, according to my testing. I hope this helps others, too, enjoying Andy’s great script !

Post #509383

milvards

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 2:54 AM

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Can anyone help on this.

I try to run this on SQL Server 2005 and it don't work. Even after lau's changes.

The code for the cursor cur_constraints does not return anything.

I don't have enough knowledge two find out whats wrong, but by running the select on it's own I can see that the Cons.info always contains 0 (zero). Without the AND Cons.info = Cols.colid, it returns all constraint rows for the table.

Does anyone out there have the skills to tell me how to fix this.

Thank you.

Post #560219

Lau-765114

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 7:21 AM

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Milvards, you are right, the script doesn't work for SQL2005 and I need it, too, for both 2000 and 2005 versions.

I had a couple of attempts on this but failed. I'm planning to give it one more try (hopefully, sooner than later) and, if I'll succeed, I'll post an updated script on this thread for your and everybody's use.

Post #560405

milvards

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 8:50 AM

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Hi Lau.

I made it work at last using some code I found on the internet (credit to a chap from India called chiragkhabaria).

Replace the code for cur_constraints with this:

DECLARE cur_constraints CURSOR FOR
SELECT Cons.XType, Cons.[Name] FROM SysObjects AS Cons
INNER JOIN (Select [Name],[ID] From SysObjects Where XType = 'U) AS Tab ON Tab.[ID] = Cons.[Parent_Obj]
INNER JOIN sysconstraints ON sysconstraints.Constid = Cons.[ID]
INNER JOIN SysColumns Col ON Col.[ColID] = sysconstraints.[ColID] AND Col.[ID] = Tab.[ID]
WHERE (Tab.[Name] = @table) AND (Col.[Name] = @column)

It can probably be written in a better way but it looks like it does the job.

M

Post #560547

Lau-765114

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 8:59 AM

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Thanks, man, I hope it works (for both 2000 and 2005). I'll give it a try today.
(I really don't care how it looks as long as it does the job properly).

Post #560560

Lau-765114

Posted Thursday, August 28, 2008 2:57 PM

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Thank you, Milvards, thank you, Chiragkhabaria ;)

I got to the same conclusion: the script works fine for both SQL2000 and 2005 if you apply the change mentioned above by Milvards.

The only case I found when it doesn't work is when the specified column is part of PK but I guess this is something we could live with.

Thanks again to all for this, especially to Andy.

Post #560838

aoa-1120895

Posted Friday, June 26, 2009 3:04 PM

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The code in the article did not work for me, I had to rewrite the stored procedure, the below works

CREATE PROCEDURE
DropColumnConstraints
@TableName varchar(256),
@ColumnName varchar(256)
AS
BEGIN

declare @sql_value nvarchar(4000);
declare @obj_name varchar(256);

declare name_cursor cursor for
select
objs.name
from dbo.sysconstraints const
inner join dbo.syscolumns cols
on const.colid = cols.colid
and const.id = cols.id
inner join dbo.sysobjects objs
on objs.id = const.constid
where cols.id = OBJECT_ID(@TableName)
and cols.name = @ColumnName

OPEN name_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM name_cursor
INTO @obj_name
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN

set @sql_value = ('alter table ' + @TableName +' drop constraint '+@obj_name);
print 'Dropping '+@obj_name;
execute sp_executesql @sql_value;

FETCH NEXT FROM name_cursor
INTO @obj_name;

END
CLOSE name_cursor
DEALLOCATE name_cursor
end

go

Post #742987

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