Question

Hello I have a column in my table that is of type bit, and i will be running a script for many many databases that checks if it exists if it does i need to alter is and add a column and default its bit value to 1 as a default

I tried the following but when it created the column it still shows NULL what am i missing?

ALTER TABLE [myTable] ADD [ShippingOption] [bit] NULL DEFAULT 1

Thank you

Answer 1

Just use WITH VALUES to have the new column take the default value rather than NULL

ALTER TABLE [myTable]
ADD [ShippingOption] [bit] NULL DEFAULT 1 WITH VALUES;

This is not required if your newly added column is marked as NOT NULL. In that case the default will be applied automatically.