>OTOH, just like any other statistics, this program is best at measuring what it measures and staying ignorant at what it doesn't.
>
>It would never measure me, for instance, because I use Toad instead. SSMS is so limited it's sometimes near useless. The code it generates frequently needs editing before it can run. Its error messages are sometimes misleading, sometimes just plain wrong. Today I had a case when a change of a field from decimal(14,1) to decimal(14,2) was refused, as it would require rebuilding the table. However, "alter table blabla alter column dcolxx decimal(14,2) null" passes without any messages from SQL. Ah, and, BTW, for those changes which really do require rebuilding the table, Toad generates the whole script which builds the temp table, inserts from the original table into it, drops the original table, renames temp to original, which SSMS never offered (that I remember - maybe recent versions can do that).

Yes, I do understand a lot of persons prefer to use other tools.

BTW, to avoid the message when you were not able to change the field type from the designer, there is a switch for that in the Tools menu.