SQL Server - COLUMN Keyword

ALTER COLUMN

The SQL Server (Transact-SQL) ALTER COLUMN keyword is used to change the data type of a column in an existing table.

Syntax

The syntax for using ALTER COLUMN statement to modify datatype of a column in SQL Server (Transact-SQL) is given below:

ALTER TABLE table_name
ALTER COLUMN column_name datatype;

Example:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

In this table, the datatype of City column is VARCHAR(100). To change the datatype of the column to VARCHAR(255), the SQL Server code is given below:

ALTER TABLE Employee
ALTER COLUMN City VARCHAR(255);

This will change the datatype of City column from VARCHAR(100) to VARCHAR(255). For a complete reference of all the data types available in SQL Server database, see Data Types reference.

DROP COLUMN

The SQL Server (Transact-SQL) DROP COLUMN keyword is used to a delete columns from an existing table.

Syntax

The syntax for using DROP COLUMN keyword to drop columns in SQL Server (Transact-SQL) is given below:

ALTER TABLE table_name
DROP COLUMN column_name;

Example:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

To drop the Salary column from the Employee table, the following statement can be used:

ALTER TABLE Employee
DROP COLUMN Age;

This will produce the below mentioned result: