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Asked: 2026-05-14T20:51:43+00:00

Scenario: I have an application (C#) that expects a SQL database and login, which

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Scenario:

I have an application (C#) that expects a SQL database and login, which are set by a user. Once connected, it checks for the existence of several table and creates them if not found.

I’d like to expand on this by having the program be capable of adding columns to those tables if I release a new version of the program which relies upon the new columns.

Question:

What is the best way to programatically check the structure of an existing SQL table and create or update it to match an expected structure?

I am planning to iterate through the list of required columns and alter the existing table whenever it does not contain the new column. I can’t help but wonder if there’s an approach that is different or better.

Criteria:

Here are some of my expectations and self-imposed rules:

  • Newer versions of the program might no longer use certain columns, but they would be retained for data logging purposes. In other words, no columns will be removed.
  • Existing data in the table must be preserved, so the table cannot simply be dropped and recreated.
  • In all cases, newly added columns would allow null data, so the population of old records is taken care of by having default null values.

Example:

Here is a sample table (because visual examples help!):

id  datetime         sensor_name  sensor_status  x1    x2    x3    x4
1   20100513T151907  na019        OK             0.01  0.21  1.41  1.22
2   20100513T152907  na019        OK             0.02  0.23  1.45  1.52

Then, in a new version, I may want to add the column x5. The “x-columns” are all data-storage columns that accept null.

Edit:

I updated the sample table above. It is more of a log and not a parent table. So the sensors will repeatedly show up in this logging table with the values logged. A separate parent table contains the geographic and other logistical information about the sensor, making the table I wish to modify a child table.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    This is a very troublesome feature that you’re thinking about implementing. i would advise against it and instead consider scripting changes using a 3rd party tool such as Red Gate’s Sql Compare: http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Compare/index.htm

    If you’re in doubt, consider downloading the trial version of the software and performing a structure diff script on two databases with some non-trivial differences. You’ll see from the result that the considerations for such operations are far from simple.

    The other way around this type of issue is to redesign your database using the EAV model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-attribute-value_model (Pivots to dynamically add rows thus never changing the structure. It has its own issues but it’s very flexible.)

    (To utilize a diff tool you would have to have a copy of all of your db versions and create diff scripts which would go out and get executed with new releases and upgrades. That’s a huge mess of its own to maintain. EAV is the way for a thing like this. It wrongfully gets a lot of flak for not being as performant as a traditional db structure but i’ve used it a number of times with great success. In fact, i have an HIPAA-compliant EAV db (Sql Server 2000) that’s been in production for over six years with several of the EAV tables containing tens or millions of rows and it’s still going strong w/ no big slow down. Of course we don’t do heavy reporting against that db. For reports we have an export that flattens the data into a relational structure.)

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