safely remove rowguid column?

  • Hi,

    Recently database was migrated to SQL 2K8R2 from SQL 2K.

    Already configured replication in SQL2K, replication was removed in SQL 2K after that database migrated to new SQL 2K8R2 setup.

    I am planed to configure database mirroring instead of using replication

    I want to remove rowguid column for all tables. Is there issue will come after droping rowguid column, Please suggestion me.

    I have tried as blow command, but it is not hope.

    alter table dbo.user_services drop column rowguid

    Msg 5074, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

    The object 'DF__sequences__rowgu__640DD89F' is dependent on column 'rowguid'.

    Msg 5074, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

    The index 'index_53575229' is dependent on column 'rowguid'.

    Msg 4922, Level 16, State 9, Line 1

    ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN rowguid failed because one or more objects access this column.

    In this cause first remove all rowguid default constraints, and drop rowguid indexes after that drop rowguid column all tables, is it correct?

  • It depends. There is no way for us to say whether those rowguid columns serve a function other than replication. If there is already a rowguid column on a table, merge replication will use the existing column rather than create a new one.

    Additionally, if code has not been written carefully, you may have code that is doing "Select *" and expects all columns to be there even if it doesn't use them. so removing the column can cause bad code to break.

    You should involve your engineering team, and it should be thoroughly tested in pre-production before you do it in production.


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