I was going through some SQL Scripts a coworker had wrote to upgrade a table to a newer version. It was simply adding a new column to the table. However, instead of a
ALTER TABLE [Table] ADD [Column] [DataType]
statement, he instead made a copy of the table with the new column, repopulated it with the existing data, deleted the old table, renamed the new one to the old table, and then re-added all the indexes and relationships.
My question is, is there any benefit to doing this rather than the simple Alter statement or is there any difference?
I can't imagine all that work for practically no difference other than the column's ordinal position being in the desired place.
When you use the SSMS GUI, it will sometimes take this approach. One possible reasons for doing it this way is "Inserting" a column rather than "appending" a column. (if you want the column to appear before some already existing columns.) In that case, adding a column won't work.
Essentially, any time a simple addition of a new column to the end of the table isn't what you're looking for. But my guess is that he used the GUI to add the column and chose the "generate SQL script" option.
Just a couple of differences on how that would be different. Hope this helps!
Adding new column to existing table:
Pros:
No need to recreate indices and constraints on the existing table.
Data on existing column remains intact.
Cons:
Huge table that has millions of records will need to be updated for
the new column.
Recreating a New Table:
Pros:
No need to worry for any kind of limits (number of columns, total
size of table) in the RDBMS
Cons:
Recreate indices and constraints
Reload data for all columns
Related
I have a SQLite database with a table with 11 columns, including 8 columns as Text with very long strings. I need to add 8 more Text columns which may or may not get long string values.
So I'm wondering whether I should add those extra 8 columns to the current table or create a new table containing a foreign key?
Which way is better in case I want to use some queries to search data in my database?
Thank you.
It depends. If there are existing queries on this table, and if they do a "select *" to get all the columns, the query will change when the asterisc gets re-evaluated. This might or might not break the software that depends on the query.
There is a workaround for this, involving creating a new table with both the old columns and the new columns and then creating a view with the name and columns of the old table. That workaround has a downside, too.
There are, as sadfiesch commented, no normalization issues here.
As far as performance goes, there are cases that go either way, and cases where it doesn't make much difference.
You should add the 8 more columns in the existing table. Try understanding the database normalization you only add a new table if your database is redundant.
In SQL Server is adding a new column at the end of the table faster than adding it at a specific location?
I have to add 20 new columns to a table that already has 250 columns and roughly 2M records. The new columns are null, float columns. Adding single column took me more than 10 minutes. I'm looking for any way to speed up the process.
If you're using SSMS, you should know that under the hood it is creating a new table with new columns then inserting the data from the original table, redoing all the keys and constraints, dropping the old table and then renaming the new table to use the old table's name.
It is probably better practice to add the row at the end and you can use then T-SQL in an order you want for retrieval.
Another note, if you're not locking the db or don't put it in single user mode it will take longer to run.
tl;dr - do not add column at specific position unless you have time to waste
Are you using?:
ALTER TABLE table_name
ADD column_name datatype
Or are you using the SSMS designer? SSMS designer may drop and recreate the table (a temporary table is created to hold the data temporarily) - this may be why it is taking a longer time.
I want to add a column to one of my tables in SQL Server. I don't want it to be at the end of the column listing in the table...I actually want it to be somewhere else (location wise) in the table. Is there another option besides dropping and rebuilding (populating) the table to accomplish this? I obviously don't want ot lose any of my data, but I would prefer it not have to have the column at the end of the table definition.
Thanks,
S
Column order in the table is irrelevant -- it's purely cosmetic.
There is no extension to ALTER TABLE that allows you to specify the ordinal position of a new column (either for adding a new column or moving an existing column).
For more on the subject, see:
Change Order of Column In Database Tables
Short answer:
I agree with OMG Ponies, column order isn't important. If you don't have a clustered index, rather drop and recreate the table than run an ALTER TABLE x ADD col.
Long answer:
If your table has a fair bit of data (50Mb comes to mind) then you will be better off recreating the table rather than ALTER TABLE x ADD col The data page allocation plan for the table is calculated at table creation time so when you add a column, SQL Server will typically put your new column's data in separate pages and put forward pointers from your existing data pages to the new data pages for the column you added. If you're going to use the new column extensively then your table IO will be quite poor since reading even 1 row will require reading at least 2 pages. Table scans will also perform poorly since forward pointers will always be followed, causing table scans that are normally sequential to jump back and forth on your disk during a read.
In this case it's better to rename the existing table, recreate your table with the new column, insert into table_name select col1, col2, 'null or default for new col', col3 from temp_renamed_table and finally drop the old table that you renamed. The data pages will be much better organised and your IO will be faster despite looking the same from a SQL developer's point of view than when ALTER TABLE is used. If you have a clustered index the table will be reorganised when you add the column and page splits are less likely. You could also run ALTER TABLE x REBUILD if you have SQL Server 2008, don't have a clustered index and lots of time when users aren't using your table. It's hard to comment on your indexing strategy without knowing much more.
This is a much better reason for recreating the table than something cosmetic like column order.
It is an extremely bad practice to rearrange columns in a table. Do not even consider trying to do such a thing. The column order is irrelevant if you have used correct coding practices (such as never and I do mean never) using select *.
If you have used select * and you change the order of the columns, you are even more at risk of breaking code because the query may not be expecting Price as the third column but as the second column and that could seriously mess up a lot of things.
Further the only way to do this is to create another table, move your data and then drop the old table and rename the first one. Of course if you have FKs, they too have to be dropped and recreated. This takes alot of time if you hav ea large data set and could cause problems for users.
There is no cuircumstance where you would ever consider doing this for a table that in on production as it is just too risky. If you are in the early stages of design, you could consider doing it.
ALTER TABLE my_table ADD COLUMN column_name VARCHAR(50) AFTER col_name;
substituting whatever def you want for VARCHAR(50)
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/alter-table.html
Edit This is of course the right answer for a MySQL server... but this is not what the OP wants.
I have quick question for you SQL gurus. I have existing tables without primary key column and Identity is not set. Now I am trying to modify those tables by making existing integer column as primary key and adding identity values for that column. My question is should I first copy all the records from the table to a temp table before making those changes . Do I loose all the previous records if I ran the T-SQL commnad to make primary key and add identity column on those tables. What are the approaches should I take such as
1) Create temp table to copy all the records from the table to be modified
2) Load all the records to the temptable
3) Make changes on the table schema
4) Finally load the records from the temp table to the original table.
Or
there are better ways that this? I really appreciate your help
Thanks
Tools>Options>Designers>Table and Database Designers
Uncheck "Prevent saving changes that require table re-creation"
[Edit] I've tried this with populated tables and I didn't lose data, but I don't really know much about this.
Hopefully you don't have too many records in the table. What happens if you use Management studio to change an existing field to identity is that it creates another table with the identity field set. it turns identity insert on and inserets the records from the original table, then turns identity insert off. Then it drops the old table and renames the table it just created. This can be quite a lengthy process if you have many records. If so I would script this out and then do it in a job that runs during the off hours because the table will be completely locked while you do this.
just do all of your changes in management studio, copy/paste the generated script into a file. DON'T SAVE CHANGES at this point. Look over and edit that script as necessary, it will probably do almost exactly what you are thinking (it will drop the original table and rename the temp one to the original's name), but handle all constraints and FKs as well.
If your existing integer column is unique and suitable, there should be no problem converting it to a PK.
Another alternative, if you don't want to use the existing column, you can add a new PK columns to the main table, populate it and seed it, then run update statements to update all other tables with new PK.
Whatever way you do it, make sure you do a back-up first!!
You can always add the IDENTITY column after you have finished copying your data around. You can also then reset the IDENTITY seed to the max integer + 1. That should solve your problems.
DBCC CHECKIDENT ('MyTable', RESEED, n)
Where n is the number you want the identity to start at.
Does anyone know of a way to alter a computed column without dropping the column in SQL Server. I want to stop using the column as a computed column and start storing data directly in the column, but would like to retain the current values.
Is this even possible?
Not that I know of but here is something you can do
add another column to the table
update that column with the values of the computed column then drop the computed column
If you need to maintain the name of the column (so as not to break client code), you will need to drop the column and add back a stored column with the same name. You can do this without downtime by making the changes (along the lines of SQLMenace's solution) in a single transaction. Here's some pseudo-code:
begin transaction
drop computed colum X
add stored column X
populate column using the old formula
commit transaction
Ok, so let me see if I got this straight. You want to take a column that is currently computed and make it a plain-jane data column. Normally this would drop the column but you want to keep the data in the column.
Make a new table with the primary key columns from your source table and the generated column.
Copy the data from your source table into the new table.
Change the column on your source table.
Copy the data back.
No matter what you do I am pretty sure changing the column will drop it. This way is a bit more complex but not that bad and it saves your data.
[Edit: #SqlMenace's answer is much easier. :) Curse you Menace!! :)]