Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'DEFAULT'

I met this issue on Oct 21st, 2009.

 

The Sql Server conplains      

db.update:
      [sql] Failed to execute:  ALTER TABLE Green ALTER COLUMN Enabled nChar(1) not null DEFAULT 'Y'

BUILD FAILED
com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'DEFAULT'.

 

The reason is because there are severl limitations on Sql Server when you issue ALTER COLUMN

 

You can't literally ALTER COLUMN in the following circumstances

 

1) currently, TEXT, IMAGE, NTEXT, TIMESTAMP type

2) it's a ROWGUIDCOL column

3) computed column or used by a computed column

4) replicated column

5) index used column

6) column used as info gathering

7) constraint used column --- including PK/FK, CHECK/UNIQUE, DEFAULT