Skip to main content

SQL Server - Change the column size without needing a DROP / RECREATE

While monitoring a production system, I noticed a lot of "String or binary data would be truncated" exceptions. This is an indication that the string data that would be persisted is larger than the database column allows.

That’s an easy one to fix! So I opened up SQL Server Management Studio, right click on the table that was causing the problem and choose Design from the context menu.

I altered the column size and hit Save. However this resulted in the following message:

SQL Server Management Studio tries to handle the resize operation by executing a ‘DROP’ and re‘CREATE’ of the table. As this would result in a loss of all the data, the operation is prevented.

But I’m making an existing column larger. I would except that this is a safe operation that can be executed without any risk of data loss?

Instead of using the designer I switched to a small SQL snippet:

Remark: Don’t forget to include the ‘NOT NULL’  modifier otherwise you end up with a NULLABLE column.

Popular posts from this blog

.NET 8–Keyed/Named Services

A feature that a lot of IoC container libraries support but that was missing in the default DI container provided by Microsoft is the support for Keyed or Named Services. This feature allows you to register the same type multiple times using different names, allowing you to resolve a specific instance based on the circumstances. Although there is some controversy if supporting this feature is a good idea or not, it certainly can be handy. To support this feature a new interface IKeyedServiceProvider got introduced in .NET 8 providing 2 new methods on our ServiceProvider instance: object? GetKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); object GetRequiredKeyedService(Type serviceType, object? serviceKey); To use it, we need to register our service using one of the new extension methods: Resolving the service can be done either through the FromKeyedServices attribute: or by injecting the IKeyedServiceProvider interface and calling the GetRequiredKeyedServic...

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.

Kubernetes–Limit your environmental impact

Reducing the carbon footprint and CO2 emission of our (cloud) workloads, is a responsibility of all of us. If you are running a Kubernetes cluster, have a look at Kube-Green . kube-green is a simple Kubernetes operator that automatically shuts down (some of) your pods when you don't need them. A single pod produces about 11 Kg CO2eq per year( here the calculation). Reason enough to give it a try! Installing kube-green in your cluster The easiest way to install the operator in your cluster is through kubectl. We first need to install a cert-manager: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.14.5/cert-manager.yaml Remark: Wait a minute before you continue as it can take some time before the cert-manager is up & running inside your cluster. Now we can install the kube-green operator: kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kube-green/kube-green/releases/latest/download/kube-green.yaml Now in the namespace where we want t...