> > Am I not allowed to issue the above updates?
>
> After trying to about it a different way I found that there were
> dependecies on it which caused this, triggers that called Upper() to
> make sure the field was in upper case.
>
> I am guessing seeing I was editing system tables it didn't check
> this. Am I guessing correctly?

Yes, very. Updating the system tables should not be done lightly.

Only after careful review of your changes and careful testing, this
should be your last resort.

The much better thing to do in cases where a normal ALTER
statement cannot do what you want it to do, is to create a new
object (table/column/whatever) and move your data afterwards.

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com