Weird hex number on constraints?

[MisterVercetti]

When I created a few new tables, I added some foreign keys via the ALTER TABLE/ADD FOREIGN KEY command. Now I need to truncate those same tables, but in order to do so I obviously need to drop the foreign keys. But when I attempt to drop the keys, I get error message 3728: ______ is not a constraint. When I went into the table design to see what was wrong, I noticed that SQL Server is attaching strange hexadecimal numbers to the ends of my constraint names (e.g. FK_Fact_TimeID_10566F31), making it virtually impossible to drop them.

Is there a way to either stop SQL Server from adding these numbers, or else find a workaround that ignores these numbers when attempting to drop the constraint?

[SQLpro]

There is two way for a workaround :
1) add a name to all your constraints
2) retrieve the name of the constraint in meta data tables or views

1) add a name to the constraint :

ALTER TABLE ... ADD CONSTRAINT MyConstraint ...
MyConstraint will be the name of the constraint

2) retrieving the constraint name

SELECT CONSTRAINT_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'MySchemaName'
AND TABLE_NAME = 'MyTabName'
AND CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'ConstraitType' -- PRIMARY KEY, UNIQUE, FOREIGN KEY, CHECK

A +

--
Frédéric BROUARD, Spécialiste modélisation, SGBR relationnel, optimisation, langage SQL.
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