Need help removing a column from a table

[ngriffiths]

We have added a column to the Business Rules, UI Actions, and Scheduled Jobs table to track items that have been added by our company. We are planning on updating to Calgary soon, but these tables wont be upgraded due to this change. Thus, in order for them to upgrade we need to back out the changes. I know I will need to delete out the column from the tables, but does anyone know how to back out this change? In addition, how do I remove any log file records that ServiceNow created relating to this?

Would appreciate any and all useful feedback on this :)!!

The field is tied to the sys_script table and was updated in Jan 2013 (not sure if this helps in anyway).

[CapaJC]

Adding a column in and of itself isn't a problem. Where you'd run into an issue is if you populated that field for otherwise unmodified out-of-box records (vs. just leaving it blank and only populating it for your custom records).

The column can stay. It's not what would prevent a Business Rule, for example, from getting updated in an upgrade. What prevents the update is a sys_update_xml record that gets created when you modify the Business Rule. If you go to the sys_update_xml list, you'll see all updates for your instance. Filter where Type = "Business Rule" to see entries created for Business Rule modifications.

The sys_update_xml entry for a Business Rule will have a Name like sys_script_5cc5e17895a10100bd9bba33ecd0aa6c, where the 32-character string at the end is the sys_id of the Business Rule that got modified. There could be multiple sys_update_xml records with the same name if you updated a Business Rule multiple times in different update sets. If you delete all sys_update_xml records for an out-of-box Business Rule, then the next time you upgrade the Business Rule would get updated if an update was available.

[CapaJC]

I will also freely admin that my technique could be obsolete! There may be a much easier way to accomplish your goal, so hopefully others will chime in if that's the case.

For example, after you upgrade you might be able to look at the upgrade log, see which Business Rules (for example) got skipped as part of the upgrade, and click a button to revert to the out-of-box version. I just don't have experience with that.