Alter Table Add Column Syntax

user_36590 0
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I'm trying to programmatically add an identity column to a table Employees. Not sure what I'm doing wrong with my syntax.

ALTER TABLE Employees
  ADD COLUMN EmployeeID int NOT NULL IDENTITY (1, 1)

ALTER TABLE Employees ADD CONSTRAINT
    PK_Employees PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
    (
      EmployeeID
    ) WITH( STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, 
    ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]

What am I doing wrong? I tried to export the script, but SQL Mgmt Studio does a whole Temp Table rename thing.

UPDATE: I think it is choking on the first statement with "Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'COLUMN'."

ddl tsql sql-server sql
4 Answers

Just remove COLUMN from ADD COLUMN

ALTER TABLE Employees
  ADD EmployeeID numeric NOT NULL IDENTITY (1, 1)

ALTER TABLE Employees ADD CONSTRAINT
        PK_Employees PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED 
        (
          EmployeeID
        ) WITH( STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, 
        ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY]
user_951070

It could be doing the temp table renaming if you are trying to add a column to the beginning of the table (as this is easier than altering the order). Also, if there is data in the Employees table, it has to do insert select * so it can calculate the EmployeeID.

user_106690
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