Question

I have a request to change the collation of a SQL Server Database:

ALTER DATABASE solarwind95
collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS

but I get this strange error:

Meldung 5075, Ebene 16, Status 1,
Zeile 1 Das ‘Spalte’-Objekt
‘CustomPollerAssignment.PollerID’ ist
von ‘Datenbanksortierung’ abhängig.
Die Datenbanksortierung kann nicht
geändert werden, wenn ein
schemagebundenes Objekt von ihr
abhängig ist. Entfernen Sie die
Anhängigkeiten der
Datenbanksortierung, und wiederholen
Sie den Vorgang.

Sorry for the german errror message. I do not know how to switch the language to english, but here is a translation:

Translation: Message 5075, Layer 16,
Status 1, Row 1 The ‘column’ object
‘CustomPollerAssignment.PollerID’
depends on ‘Database sorting. The
database sorting cannot be changed if
a schema bound object depends on it.
Remove the dependency of the database
sortieren and retry.

I got a ton more of the errors like that.

Answer 1

You’ll need to remove WITH SCHEMABINDING from your views and table-valued functions. To identify them you can query the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views:

SELECT TABLE_SCHEMA, TABLE_NAME AS VIEW_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS
WHERE VIEW_DEFINITION LIKE '%SCHEMABINDING%'

SELECT ROUTINE_SCHEMA, ROUTINE_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES
WHERE ROUTINE_DEFINITION LIKE '%SCHEMABINDING%'

1. First backup the database.
2. Generate an ALTER script of all schema-bound views and functions.
3. Delete the words “WITH SCHEMABINDING” from the script.
4. Run the script a few times, until all reference errors are resolved.
5. Change the collation on your database.
6. Script and drop all constraints (keys, checks and defaults).
7. Change the collation of each column using the script below.
8. Recreate constraints.
9. Finally, run the original script a few times to enable schema-binding.

You can change the collation of all columns with this script:

DECLARE @collation nvarchar(128)
DECLARE @commands table ([SQL] nvarchar(max))
DECLARE @cursor cursor
DECLARE @sql nvarchar(max)

SET @collation = 'SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS'

INSERT @commands ([SQL])
SELECT 'ALTER TABLE ' + QUOTENAME(c.TABLE_SCHEMA) +'.'+ QUOTENAME(c.TABLE_NAME)
    + ' ALTER COLUMN ' + QUOTENAME(c.COLUMN_NAME)
    + ' ' + c.DATA_TYPE
    + ISNULL('(' + LTRIM(STR(c.CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH)) + ')', '')
    + ISNULL(' COLLATE ' + @collation, '')
    + ' ' + CASE c.IS_NULLABLE WHEN 'NO' THEN 'NOT ' ELSE '' END + 'NULL'
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS c
INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES t
ON t.TABLE_SCHEMA = c.TABLE_SCHEMA AND t.TABLE_NAME = c.TABLE_NAME
WHERE t.TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
AND c.COLLATION_NAME <> @collation

SET @cursor = CURSOR FOR SELECT [SQL] FROM @commands
OPEN @cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM @cursor INTO @sql

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN 
    PRINT @sql
    EXEC (@sql)

    FETCH NEXT FROM @cursor INTO @sql
END