Question

Using T-SQL I’ve found that I can’t use ‘ALTER INDEX’ with the table/index values in variables without getting a syntax error. Is there some way this could be done ? I’m on SQL Server 2005.

My code looks like this :

DECLARE @TABLENAME VARCHAR(256) DECLARE @IDXNAME VARCHAR(256) DECLARE @SCHEMAID INT SET @TABLENAME = 'T1' SET @IDXNAME = 'T1_IDX0' -- The next line is OK as it hardcodes the variable names ALTER INDEX T1_IDX0 ON T1 SET (ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) -- The next line generates a syntax error ALTER INDEX @IDXNAME ON @TABLENAME SET (ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) 

The syntax error looks like this :

Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 7 Incorrect syntax near '@IDXNAME'. Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 7 Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'SET'. 

The real code I’m working on is more complex than the above and being able to use variables would be useful. I guess one way around it would be use dynamic SQL but I’d really rather not if I could avoid it.

Answer 1

Unfortunately what you are trying to do is not possible. The best workaround I can suggest is to build the alter statement as a string, concatenate the variables you have in the statement, and then exec() it.

Try something like this:

declare @alter varchar(200); set @alter = 'ALTER INDEX ' + @IDXNAME + ' ON ' + @TABLENAME + ' SET (ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON)';  exec(@alter);