If you decrease the length of a column, make sure the reduced column length does not result in truncated data. For example, you could use alter table to reduce the length of the title column of the titles table from a varchar(80) to a varchar(2), but the data is meaningless:
select title from titles
title ----- Bu Co Co Em Fi Is Li Ne On Pr Se Si St Su Th Th Th Yo
Adaptive Server issues error messages about truncating the column data only if the set string_rtruncation option is turned on. If you need to truncate character data, set the appropriate string-truncation option and modify the column to decrease its length.
