“Prevent saving changes that require the table to be re-created” negative effects

Question

Preamble

I was modifying a column in SQL Server 2008 today, changing the datatype from something like currency(18,0) to (19,2).

I got the

Answer 1

SQL Server drops and recreates the tables only if you:

• Add a new column
• Change the Allow Nulls setting for a column
• Change the column order in the table
• Change the column data type

Using ALTER is safer, as in case the metadata is lost while you re-create the table, your data will be lost.