Adding a column

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Adding a column

Chandhini

Ten Centuries

Points: 1243
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April 13, 2010 at 6:49 am

#97269

Hi,
I have a table called Customer. It has Cust_Id, Cust_Name, Cust_SSN, Cust_Address. There are some records in table. I would like to insert one more column Cust_DOB after Cust_Name (after second column) through T-SQL. not at the design mode using SSMS. I have tried the below SQL Query. but i m getting an error.
ALTER TABLE Customer ADD Cust_DOB datetime AFTER Cust_Name.
Can anyone suggest me regarding this issue.
Thanks in advance.

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BrainDonor SSCoach Points: 19243 More actions · Answer 1

What is the error message?

And is there a reason that you're trying to place the new column anywhere other than on the end?

BrainDonor.

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Chandhini Ten Centuries Points: 1243 More actions · Answer 2

M getting incorrect syntax error. and m asked to insert this column in between existing columns.

WayneS SSC Guru Points: 95405 More actions · Answer 3

You cannot add a column to a table at a specified column position; adding a column adds it to the end of the table.

If you really need this column in this position (there's really no reason to require this, but ...), then you will need to:

rename this table.

build new table with columns in the desired order.

insert into new table select from old table.

rebuild all indexes / defaults / constraints

IMO, quite a lot of needless work to put a column in a specified position. Especially when you can select the columns in the desired order (instead of select *, do select column1, column5, column3, column2, column4). The front-end application will never know the difference.

Wayne
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BrainDonor SSCoach Points: 19243 More actions · Answer 4

This kind of thing has been discussed a few times in the past. The basic answer is no, without more work than it is probably worth.

http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic476826-338-1.aspx

http://qa.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic643902-360-1.aspx

BrainDonor.

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Bhuvnesh SSC Guru Points: 59351 More actions · Answer 5

@Chandhini . if you post the syntax of your ALTER statement , we can try to give the cause of its failure

-------Bhuvnesh----------
I work only to learn Sql Server...though my company pays me for getting their stuff done;-)

Rob Schripsema SSCertifiable Points: 7469 More actions · Answer 6

WayneS (4/13/2010)
If you really need this column in this position (there's really no reason to require this, but ...), then you will need to:
rename this table.
...
IMO, quite a lot of needless work to put a column in a specified position. Especially when you can select the columns in the desired order (instead of select *, do select column1, column5, column3, column2, column4). The front-end application will never know the difference.

UNLESS....the front end is dependent on the ordinal positions of the columns. The dev team where I recently worked used the SSMS UI to insert some new columns (in the 'middle' of the list of columns) into a table on the dev box, then used their fancy, home-grown code generator to write the C# classes for CRUD work. Come time to roll out to the QA system, I used SQL Compare (from RedGate) to generate the update script -- it didn't bother checking order, it just created an update script that appended the new columns to the 'end' of the column list. I applied the script and all should be well, right?

Unfortunately, I then learned that the code generator wrote code dependent on the ordinal position of the columns in the table. So, when we started testing, NOTHING worked, since the columns on the QA box were in a different order than those on the DEV box.

Sometimes, it DOES make a difference.

Rob Schripsema
Propack, Inc.

RBarryYoung SSC Guru Points: 143329 More actions · Answer 7

Chandhini (4/13/2010)
Hi,
I have a table called Customer. It has Cust_Id, Cust_Name, Cust_SSN, Cust_Address. There are some records in table. I would like to insert one more column Cust_DOB after Cust_Name (after second column) through T-SQL. not at the design mode using SSMS. I have tried the below SQL Query. but i m getting an error.
ALTER TABLE Customer ADD Cust_DOB datetime AFTER Cust_Name.
Can anyone suggest me regarding this issue.
Thanks in advance.

WHY don't you want to use SSMS? Since it does this for you automatically, this seems like an unusual restriction.

[font="Times New Roman"]-- RBarryYoung[/font], [font="Times New Roman"] (302)375-0451[/font] blog: MovingSQL.com, Twitter: @RBarryYoung [font="Arial Black"]
Proactive Performance Solutions, Inc. [/font][font="Verdana"] "Performance is our middle name."[/font]

vaibhav.tiwari SSCommitted Points: 1946 More actions · Answer 8

This is the only option if you dont want to use enterprise manager

-- creating the new table with the structure required

CREATE TABLE Emp_temp(

emp_num INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,

first_name CHAR(30) NOT NULL,

middle_name CHAR(30) NULL,

last_name CHAR(30) NOT NULL

);

GO

-- copying the data from Employees table into Emp_temp table

INSERT INTO Emp_temp(emp_num, first_name, last_name)

SELECT * FROM Employees;

GO

-- deleting the Employees table

DROP TABLE Employees;

GO

-- Renaming Emp_temp table into Employees table

EXEC sp_rename 'Emp_temp', 'Employees';

GO

Vaibhav K Tiwari
To walk fast walk alone
To walk far walk together

Chandhini Ten Centuries Points: 1243 More actions · Answer 9

Thanks a lot for all your valuable inputs.

Now, creating a table with new structure, dumping the data and renaming the table is the only option!!!.