Need to alter identity property

I need to alter all our identity columns to be not for replication (currently they do not have this condition). I checked how Microsoft is performing this task by recording a script while doing this manually in SSMS. They simply create another table with identity column not for replication, pour data into new table, drop the old one and sp_rename for new one. This is not the case for us - some our tables have billions of records so we can't afford keeping these tables off-line for so long.

Are there any ways to alter it ? Any wok arounds, except directly updating sys tables which is not recommended ?

Thanks

There is no TSQL statement to modify identity column properties or add not for replication to existing column. There might be a replication system SP that will do this for you. So I am moving this thread over to the SQL Server Replication forum.|||

I believe you can do it using T-SQL: You probably need sp4 for this. I know it works in SQL 2005. I was told it was added in SP4. Check it out though.

alter table dbo.yourTable

alter column [yourIDColumn] add NOT FOR REPLICATION

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Thanks a lot Dinakar, that's very helpful.

Is there similar scripts for check and foreign keys constraints ?