Question

I am changing the type of a column from bit to tinyint. After that, I want to define the new default value and a new constraint for it. How do I do this? I know how to do it if the column does not exist, but for an existing column my approaches failed so far.

Thanks! 🙂

Answer 1

Try something like this:

-- change the column type
ALTER TABLE dbo.gradytest
  ALTER COLUMN YourColumn TINYINT NULL

-- add a named default constraint
ALTER TABLE dbo.gradytest
  ADD CONSTRAINT DF_YourColumn_Default DEFAULT(4) FOR YourColumn