I used this approach to migrate our business-critical database from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2016 while changing the data type of primary key column having deep penetration in the database itself ...

Changing the column name is not a trivial operation especially if the column is referenced in Views, Stored Procedures etc. To execute the rename of a column, there is the sp_rename system Stored ...

It’s surprisingly easy to stop query folding happening in Power Query by changing the data type of a column. This is mentioned in the docs here, and it’s something several people have b… ...