Question

I have the same problem as described in this question, but there it’s SQL Server 2005 and the ‘accepted’ answer doesn’t work in SQL Server 2000.

Specifically: I’m trying to run ALTER TABLE foo DROP COLUMN bar, and it’s failing because there’s a ‘default constraint.’ Meaning, I have a default value on that column which SQL Server implements as a separate constraint that I need to delete first.

The problem is no name was given for the default constraint when the column was created, so I have to query the system tables to discover the (auto-generated) name of the constraint.

The answer given in that other question works for me in SQL Server 2005 but not in SQL Server 2000. I need the latter.

[UPDATE] I need a query that can answer the question ‘What is the name of the default constraint for column bar in table foo.’ Not a way for a human being to manually find the answer.

Answer 1

Just figured out what the referenced SQL 2005 query was actually doing. Here’s a replication of that query that works in SQL 2000

select      col.name,      col.colorder,      col.cdefault,      OBJECTPROPERTY(col.cdefault, N'IsDefaultCnst') as is_defcnst,      dobj.name as def_name from syscolumns col      left outer join sysobjects dobj          on dobj.id = col.cdefault and dobj.type = 'D'  where col.id = object_id(N'dbo.table_name')  and dobj.name is not null