Adding a new column to Table which contains live data

Posted by Ardman on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ardman
Published on 2010-04-29T11:20:38Z Indexed on 2010/04/29 11:27 UTC
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I have a large table consisting of over 60 millions records and I would like to add 2 new columns for data migration purposes. There are indexes on the table and some of them are large. So, by me adding the 2 new columns to the table, will I run the risk of slowing down the database whilst it attempts to add them and maybe time-out? Or will it just work?

I know that if I try and rearrange the columns SQL Server will ask me to drop and re-create the table, so I definately don't want this. Is this something everyone is challenged with?

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