How to remove a column from an existing table?

Your example is simple and doesn’t require any additional table changes but generally speaking this is not so trivial.

If this column is referenced by other tables then you need to figure out what to do with other tables/columns. One option is to remove foreign keys and keep referenced data in other tables.

Another option is to find all referencing columns and remove them as well if they are not needed any longer.

In such cases the real challenge is finding all foreign keys. You can do this by querying system tables or using third party tools such as ApexSQL Search (free) or Red Gate Dependency tracker (premium but more features). There a whole thread on foreign keys here


ALTER TABLE MEN DROP COLUMN Lname

Generic:

ALTER TABLE table_name DROP COLUMN column_name;

In your case:

ALTER TABLE MEN DROP COLUMN Lname;

Tags:

Sql Server