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

Another way to this without totally dropping the table is

1. Take a backup of the column values.

2. Make the column nullable if it does not already allow nulls. Set the column values to be null by doing

   update tablename set columnname = null 
   

3. Delete the column
4. Insert a new column with the same name as the deleted column and the type which you want
5. Insert the saved data into this column