alter table without data type

I would like to set a field to not null which I can do like this: ALTER TABLE table1 ALTER COLUMN field1 BIGINT NOT NULL

My question is there anyway to set this field to NOT NULL without having to specify the data type BIGINT? I'm using dynamic sql and if there was a way then I wouldn't need to go get the data type of the field dynamically and it would save me a step. Thanks.Why are using dynamic SQL in the first place?|||I'm creating tables from a DB2 database and importing it's data. I have to dynamically do this because the tables on the DB2 side are constantly changing.|||So when the tables change (and yes you need to supply the datatype) in DB2, how do you apply the schema changes? Are you using ERWin?

And what do you mean by constantly? Is this a production database?

And what schema changes are you applying...I mean it could get kind of hairy doing everything...indexes, constraints...it could get ugly...

Are you taking those things in to account?|||I'm doing a full refresh (drop/create) of the tables. Not using ERWin, just stored procedures.

"Constantly" may be a bad term. It is a production database (DB2 side) so the changes are minimal, but I do not want to maintain changes on the MSSQL side.

I created a table to relate keys of different tables I'm pulling in. So the schema I'm developing is controlled.

It's looking like the best way to do this is to see if the column needs to be NOT NULL on creation.

Alter Column Set Default

I've done some research on setting the default value of a column and found the following code:

ALTER TABLE [table1] ALTER COLUMN [column1] SET DEFAULT 0

I am trying to set column1 within table1 to a default value of 0, column1 is an int data type. But it doesn't work within MS SQL SERVER 2000.

Can anyone tell me what's wrong?what you want is this:

ALTER TABLE table1
ADD CONSTRAINT DF_table1_column1
DEFAULT 0 FOR column1|||Thanks very much! It's appreciated.

Alter a column to be the table identity column

i have a table
table1
column1 int not null
column2 char not nul
column3 char
i want to script a change for table1 to alter column1 to be the table identity column. not primary.you can not. You must create a new table with an identity column already defined and copy your data from the old to the new, drop your old table and rename your new table|||Just a curious question then why is that i can use the enterprise manager to do it?
the tables in question have data in them which is why i dont want to drop them.|||Just a curious question then why is that i can use the enterprise manager to do it?
the tables in question have data in them which is why i dont want to drop them.

Care to guess what Enterprise Mangler is about to do in the background?|||Care to guess what Enterprise Mangler is about to do in the background?

it is really curious that the enterprise mangler does use to do this operation. I had a whole of tables to convert to identity once and I traced the operation that EM does and there is a lot of weird stuff in their that does not pan out in the QA.

as for dudes question. you need to do a an

INSERT INTO MyNewTable
SELECT ... FROM MyOldTable

before you drop the old table.|||Well since it was the client that messed the tables up by importing them into another db then importing them back without selecting all objects, i showed them how to fix them using the EM and said to get after it. (1242 tables in all which is why i was trying to find a way of scripting it). i did use another clients db to create all the indexes and sent to them to use.
anyways thanks for all the time and help.