We can not directly change a column to identity columns, say we have a primary key column or any normal column in our table and want to make it identity column then we cannot do it directly by altering the table but there are only two way to change column to identity column
These are the case if we can not open our database in SQL Server Management Studio if we can then
Now let's back to our previous point that if we cannot see our table in design view then
1. Create a new table with same structure and identity column and copy existing table records to this table and drop the existing table
In this approach we can save our existing IDs as it is, suppose we have a table named Tags without identity then we can create a table Tags1 with same column but with Identity column like this
CREATE TABLE [Tags1]
(
[TagID] [smallint] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[TagName] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,
[Count] [int] NULL,
)
Now write the script to copy the data from Tags table to Tags1
SET IDENTITY_INSERT [dbo].[Tags1] ON
Go
INSERT INTO [dbo].[Tags1] ( [TagID], [TagName], [Count] )
SELECT [TagID], [TagName], [Count]
FROM [dbo].[Tags]
Go
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo].[Tags1] OFF
Now we get every thing in our new table Tags1 so time to drop our old table Tags and rename Tags1 to Tags
DROP TABLE dbo].[Tags]
Go
EXEC sp_rename 'Tags1', 'Tags'
Go
Now our Tags table have identity column as well as our previous records as well.
2. Add new column to table with identity and drop the existing column
ALTER TABLE Tags ADD TagID1 INT IDENTITY(1,1)
Go
ALTER TABLE Tags DROP COLUMN TagID
Go
EXEC sp_rename 'Tags.TagID1', 'TagID', 'COLUMN'
Go
This way of adding new column and dropping existing one and finally renaming new column name to old column name is easy but in this way we cannot save our existing data (IDs).
See how to remove the Identity property of a column in SQL Server 2008
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Having 13+ years of experience in Microsoft Technologies (C#, ASP.Net, MVC and SQL Server). Worked with Metaoption LLC, for more than 9 years and still with the same company. Always ready to learn new technologies and tricks.
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| By Ali Adravi On 02 May, 13 Viewed: 1,096 |
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