Need to add a new column to an existing table with 37M rows

I have been trying a couple of methods to add a column to a table. Well adding the column hasnt been that difficult. The difficult part is when I need to update this newly added column with a value returned from a function. Even 1000 rows takes for ever to update in a transaction. Is there any one who has come across this stituation, please help.

Thanks in Advance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by codezilla

I have been trying a couple of methods to add a column to a table. Well adding the column hasnt been that difficult. The difficult part is when I need to update this newly added column with a value returned from a function. Even 1000 rows takes for ever to update in a transaction. Is there any one who has come across this stituation, please help.

Thanks in Advance.

am not sure there are other ways...maybe you could benchmark your UPDATE vs SELECT ...newfield = udf(para) into ... from...

depending on table that your updating (may have triggers, constraint). the cons of SELECT...INTO is also space on your db.

also, try if you can just use a CALCULATED FIELD. another one is to just use a function outside of db, that is if you don't need to keep this field and will be used primarily for display purposes.