At 09:39 AM 13/11/2005 +0000, you wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I need to drop the primary key constraint on a table which was
>created something like this:
>
>CREATE TABLE NameValue (
> Name VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
> Value VARCHAR(100)
>);
>ALTER TABLE NameValue ADD PRIMARY KEY (Name);
>
>I.e. the constraint does not have name. What is the best way to drop
>the constraint in a script? From reading a similar question in this
>group it looks like
>
>delete from
> RDB$RELATION_CONSTRAINTS
>where
> RDB$CONSTRAINT_TYPE='PRIMARY KEY' and
> RDB$RELATION_NAME='NameValue'
>
>should do the trick. Can someone please confirm this as a number of
>our customers will be affected.

No, it's *never* a good idea to manipulate metadata by performing your own
DML operations on the system tables. That's in the top 5 ways to corrupt
databases. *READ* them, don't change them!

The "no-name" constraints in fact do have unique names. You can query
RDB$Relation_Constraints with your search clause to find out what they are.

select rdb$constraint_name from rdb$relation_constraints
where
RDB$CONSTRAINT_TYPE='PRIMARY KEY' and
RDB$RELATION_NAME='NameValue'

Then, when you know it, you can drop it.

alter table Department
drop constraint INTEG_13

./heLen