> Sorry, perhaps I didn't explain properly. The second case means that the
> table is being created with the column I am going to update (so there's no
> "ALTER TABLE").
>

So when you say update, it's the update of the column contents? or the alter
table add column statement which is slow?
If the latter, are there any triggers on the table? Is this varchar(30)
clumn actually a domain with a check constraint?
Alan