> 1) Make a backup (which you - of course - always do)
> 2) Create a temporary column (ALTER TABLE ... ADD TEMP TIMESTAMP)
> 3) Copy the contents of DATE_ENTERED to TEMP
> 4) Delete the column DATE_ENTERED
> 5) Create the column DATE_ENTERED without not null
> 6) Copy the contents of TEMP to DATE_ENTERED
> 7) Delete TEMP
>
> There should be quicker ways altering system tables directly, but this is a
> pretty safe way to do things.

This has the advantage of allowing you to check the data, while altering the
system tables could make the database unreadable.

My suggestion is to create a new 'clean' table and just pump the data over. This
is always useful after you have been making a lot of changes to get you back to
a clean setup. It also makes you think about keeping a copy of the metadata
available ( which we all do - also <g> )

--
Lester Caine
-----------------------------
L.S.Caine Electronic Services