How to change a column without dropping a table in SQL 2008

Question

Why does SQL 2008 all of a sudden want to drop my tables when I go to change the column type from say int to real? This never happened in SQL 2005 to my knowledge. Any insight

Answer 1

I have the same issue. Athough my account has sa rights if I try using another sa account it works. It seems that somehow my account does not have the ability to alter. still investigating, but it is a permission issue.

update:

I cannot expain it. but this is what I did. there two domain groups my account belonged to. One was a new AD domain group and the other was an NT legay domain group. Once I removed the legacy domain group I was able to alter the table successfully. Mind you both groups had "sa" priviliges.

The behavior was that the alter commands would result in success, but nothing changed on the table. Then when I manually tried to change the fields through the designer it complained that I was not allowed to make change if it required to drop and recreate the table. I found the setting in tools and I was able to turn that off. But this table is huge and not a good idea to do this. I woud advise others against it.

so it was a permission issue. I can't explain how, but I hope it helps someone else