Turn off constraints temporarily (MS SQL)

Question

-- Disable the constraints on a table called tableName:
ALTER TABLE tableName NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL

-- Re-enable the constraints on a table called tableName:
ALTER TABLE tableName WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL
---------------------------------------------------------

-- Disable constraints for all tables in the database:
EXEC sp_msforeachtable 'ALTER TABLE ? NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL'

-- Re-enable constraints for all tables in the database:
EXEC sp_msforeachtable 'ALTER TABLE ? WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL'
---------------------------------------------------------

You can disable FK and CHECK constraints only in SQL 2005+. See ALTER TABLE

ALTER TABLE foo NOCHECK CONSTRAINT ALL

or

ALTER TABLE foo NOCHECK CONSTRAINT CK_foo_column

Primary keys and unique constraints can not be disabled, but this should be OK if I've understood you correctly.

And, if you want to verify that you HAVEN'T broken your relationships and introduced orphans, once you have re-armed your checks, i.e.

ALTER TABLE foo CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL

or

ALTER TABLE foo CHECK CONSTRAINT FK_something

then you can run back in and do an update against any checked columns like so:

UPDATE myUpdatedTable SET someCol = someCol, fkCol = fkCol, etc = etc

And any errors at that point will be due to failure to meet constraints.

You can actually disable all database constraints in a single SQL command and the re-enable them calling another single command. See:

• Can foreign key constraints be temporarily disabled using TSQL?

I am currently working with SQL Server 2005 but I am almost sure that this approach worked with SQL 2000 as well