Making an Existing column an Identity column

Hi,

I have a column that is unique that I would like to make into an IDENTITIY column after I insert some data into it.

I tried

alter table <table_name>
alter column <col_name> int Identity (1,1)

but it fails.

Ajay

WORD4LIFE
(http://www.word4life.com)Nope...can't do it...

If you have a table with a int column and want to change it...you can graphically do it in EM...

But guess what it's really doing...

BEGIN TRANSACTION
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE
SET ARITHABORT ON
SET NUMERIC_ROUNDABORT OFF
SET CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL ON
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
SET ANSI_PADDING ON
SET ANSI_WARNINGS ON
COMMIT
BEGIN TRANSACTION
CREATE TABLE dbo.Tmp_Table1a
(
col1 int NOT NULL IDENTITY (1, 1)
) ON [PRIMARY]
GO
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.Tmp_Table1a ON
GO
IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM dbo.Table1a)
EXEC('INSERT INTO dbo.Tmp_Table1a (col1)
SELECT col1 FROM dbo.Table1a TABLOCKX')
GO
SET IDENTITY_INSERT dbo.Tmp_Table1a OFF
GO
DROP TABLE dbo.Table1a
GO
EXECUTE sp_rename N'dbo.Tmp_Table1a', N'Table1a', 'OBJECT'
GO
GRANT SELECT ON dbo.Table1a TO public AS dbo
COMMIT

Just make sure you don't already have a temp_table...

What a hack

M$ is good at them...lots of practice...|||Look it up in BOL

TABLOCKX Use an exclusive lock on a table. This lock prevents others from reading or updating the table and is held until the end of the statement or transaction.

And the IDENTITY_INSERTS Are inb the correct order...

btw, sql server itself generated it...look a save sql server change script in EM after you make a change to a table...sql