Question

Can this be done in bulk too? So that all columns in the table can be set to switch off the ‘NOT NULL’ flag?

Answer 1

You should be able to use an ALTER TABLE xxx ALTER COLUMN statement to redefine the column.

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If this is a one-time thing you need to run, you could use a trick by writing a query that queries the column names for the table from the system/dba table and generates your alter statements. You copy the results of the query (your 15 or however many alter statements) into your script and just run that. I don’t have much mssql experience nor an environment to test on right now but something along the lines of:

SELECT 
  'ALTER TABLE ' + table_name + ' ALTER COLUMN ' + column_name + ' ' + data_type
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Columns 
WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'xxx' 

where you will need to manipulate the data_type part to add/remove the NULL constraint text