Update Collation of all fields in database on the fly

Question

We recently moved our database from our SQL Server 2005 server to our SQL Server 2008 server. Everything moved over fine, however now we are finding that we are getting collation conflicts. The old server had a different collation with the new server.

Now our tables created before the move are one collation, and the ones created after are another collation.

Is there a way to update the tables/columns with the old collation to the new collation?

I understand setting the default database/server collation does not modify any existing tables (link). I really don't want to recreate the database if I don't have to.

Any help really appreciated.

UPDATE

Thanks for your help guys, finally got it working.

For future reference, here is my final script:

SELECT 'ALTER TABLE [' + SYSOBJECTS.Name + '] ALTER COLUMN [' + SYSCOLUMNS.Name + '] ' + SYSTYPES.name +      CASE systypes.NAME     WHEN 'text' THEN ' '     ELSE     '(' + RTRIM(CASE SYSCOLUMNS.length     WHEN -1 THEN 'MAX'     ELSE CONVERT(CHAR,SYSCOLUMNS.length)     END) + ') '      END      + ' ' + ' COLLATE Latin1_General_CI_AS ' + CASE ISNULLABLE WHEN 0 THEN 'NOT NULL' ELSE 'NULL' END     FROM SYSCOLUMNS , SYSOBJECTS , SYSTYPES     WHERE SYSCOLUMNS.ID = SYSOBJECTS.ID     AND SYSOBJECTS.TYPE = 'U'     AND SYSTYPES.Xtype = SYSCOLUMNS.xtype     AND SYSCOLUMNS.COLLATION IS NOT NULL     AND NOT ( sysobjects.NAME LIKE 'sys%' )     AND NOT ( SYSTYPES.name LIKE 'sys%' )     GO 

Here is the site that contained the script I based it on. I had to tweak it to get it working correctly.

Answer 1

Just in case anyone looking at this is using SQL server 2008, i had to make a couple modifications:

SELECT 'ALTER TABLE [' + sys.objects.name + '] ALTER COLUMN [' + sys.columns.name + '] ' + sys.types.name +      CASE sys.types.name     WHEN 'text' THEN ' '     ELSE     '(' + RTRIM(CASE sys.columns.max_length     WHEN -1 THEN 'MAX'     ELSE CONVERT(CHAR,sys.columns.max_length)     END) + ') '      END      + ' ' + ' COLLATE Latin1_General_BIN ' + CASE sys.columns.is_nullable WHEN 0 THEN 'NOT NULL' ELSE 'NULL' END     FROM sys.columns , sys.objects , sys.types     WHERE sys.columns.object_id = sys.objects.object_id     AND sys.objects.TYPE = 'U'     AND sys.types.system_type_id = sys.columns.system_type_id     AND sys.columns.collation_name IS NOT NULL     AND NOT ( sys.objects.NAME LIKE 'sys%' )     AND NOT ( sys.types.name LIKE 'sys%' )