if I have a stored procedure say create procure w AS ALTER TABLE t ADD x char(1) UPDATE t set x =1 Even when it lets me create that stored procedure (if I create it when x exists), when it runs, there is an error on the UPDATE statement because column x doesn't exist. What's the conventional way to deal with this, it must come up all the time? I can work around it by putting the UPDATE inside EXEC, is there another/better way? Thanks