SQL Server 2005: 240 million row table. Column requirements changing from NOT NULL to NULL.
Generally bad practice (and often impossible) to use ALTER statements when dealing with tables this big, however, trying to avoid rebuilding the table, if possible.
Tested ALTER statement against a dev table containing 20m rows, and the statement executed successfully in <1 second.
Question: This appears that it should work against the huge production table... but can anyone out there point out risks or impact based on experience (other than the obvious)?
Many thanks.