Setting Identity to on or off in SQL server

Question

I want to set Is Identity property of a column to off and after inserting an explicit value setting it to on again.I\'ve written this query :

SET IDENTITY_INSERT         


        

Answer 1

You can turn off the Identity property, but it involves editing system tables which is not considered a good practice. You are also unlikely to have the necessary rights, and will probably see You do not have permission to run the RECONFIGURE statement attempting the following code:

DECLARE @tableName nvarchar(128) = 'YourTable';

-- Get a list of identity columns (informational)
SELECT OBJECT_NAME(object_id) tableName, sc.name colName, st.name dataType
FROM sys.columns sc
JOIN sys.types st
    ON st.system_type_id = sc.system_type_id
WHERE sc.is_identity = 1
AND OBJECT_NAME(object_id) = @tableName

-- Allow ad-hoc changes to system catalogs
EXEC  sp_configure 'allow update', 1
GO
reconfigure with override
GO
-- Eliminate the identityness
UPDATE syscolumns SET colstat = colstat - 1
WHERE id = object_id(@tableName)
AND name = 'Id' -- Specify column if you like, though only one identity per table is currently supported
GO
-- Unallow ad-hoc changes to system catalogs
exec sp_configure 'allow update', 0
GO
reconfigure with override
GO