We maintain individual scripts (under source control) for constraints.
This allows us to use the same constraint scripts for new installs and,
when necessary, upgrades.

--
Hope this helps.

Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP

-----------------------
SQL FAQ links (courtesy Neil Pike):

http://www.ntfaq.com/Articles/Index....partmentID=800
http://www.sqlserverfaq.com
http://www.mssqlserver.com/faq
-----------------------

"Jason Berkan" <jason_berkan@canada.com> wrote in message
news:3f4f7255.3759573@enews.newsguy.com...
> Forgive me if this question has an obvious answer, but I am trying to
> figure out the "best practices" for designing a database, and am
> fairly new to SQL/relational databases, having worked with flat file
> databases for years.
>
> When you write the CREATE TABLE statements for a database, should you
> include the constraints as part of the create statement, or should the
> constraints be added later via ALTER TABLE statements?
>
> In CREATE TABLE:
>
> CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Testing] (
> [Description] [varchar] (30) NOT NULL ,
> [Active] [bit] NOT NULL ,
> CONSTRAINT [PK_Testing] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (
> [Description]
> )
> )
>
> Through ALTER TABLE:
>
> CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Testing] (
> [Description] [varchar] (30) NOT NULL ,
> [Active] [bit] NOT NULL ,
> )
> GO
>
> ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Testing]
> ADD CONSTRAINT [PK_Testing] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED (
> [Description]
> )
>
> My initial thought is to add the constraints later, via ALTER TABLE,
> as that allows all the tables to be created before foreign key
> relationships are setup, thus preventing the problem where table A
> must be created before table B. Is there anything else I should be
> considering?
>
> Jason