Change Schema on all SQL tables

By bradyupton in Database Design 0 Comment

Today I ran into a problem where all of my SQL Server tables used a different schema than dbo and the application couldn’t understand the different schema. Using the ALTER SCHEMA statement you can chance the schema of a table, for example, the following statement will change the schema from compmsauser to dbo.

ALTER SCHEMA dbo TRANSFER compmsauser.tablename

This works perfectly unless you have to change hundreds of table schemas. The following query will create the T-SQL needed to change every table: (change the WHERE clause to the schema you need to replace)

SELECT 'ALTER SCHEMA dbo TRANSFER ' + s.Name + '.' + o.Name
FROM sys.Objects o
INNER JOIN sys.Schemas s on o.schema_id = s.schema_id
WHERE s.Name = 'compmsauser'
And (o.Type = 'U' Or o.Type = 'P' Or o.Type = 'V')

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This query will create the ALTER SCHEMA statement for you! All you have to do now is copy and paste all of the results in a new query window and execute.

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Downgrade from SQL Server Enterprise Edition to Standard Edition

By bradyupton in Upgrades/Migrations 0 Comment

I’ve came across a lot of SQL Server’s in my career that were installed using the Enterprise Edition and never utilized the Enterprise features. Downgrading to a lower edition cannot be done in place. This tip will describe the steps needed to downgrade.

Create Database Backups

As always, before doing anything drastic (or non-drastic), BACKUP all the databases (system and user)! Also, if you have a development environment, please test on it first.

Check for Enterprise features

After backing up the databases run the following query on each database:

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_persisted_sku_features

This DMV will tell you whether or not the database is utilizing any of the Enterprise features.

Check Version and Build Number

Because you never know when an install may fail, check the version and build number of the current SQL Server. After the downgrade, you will need to bring the new SQL Server back to the patch level. You can view this information by executing the following command:

SELECT @@VERSION

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Save the results to a text editor.

Decision…

There are two different directions we can go from here.

  1. We can do the traditional uninstall Enterprise, install Standard, patch, restore databases
  2. Or we can do what I call “The Jonathan Kehayias” approach. (I saw this method awhile back from a forum post by Jonathan):

Copy System Databases

Shutdown the SQL Server service and copy the master, model and msdb database files (.mdf and .ldf) to another location. We will need these later:

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Uninstall SQL Server

Uninstall SQL Server from Control Panel:

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You only need to uninstall the Instance (includes SSIS, SSAS, SSRS, SSDT). There is no need to uninstall the Shared Components (SSMS, Client Tools, and Connectivity).

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Reboot

Reboot the server. After rebooting, browse to the location of the data files and you will notice that the user databases weren’t removed with the uninstall, but the system databases were. This is why we copied them in the step above:

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