Prevent rowversion (timestamp) column from changing ALTER TABLE COLUMN

Question

I would like to run following command without Rowversion (timestamp) column values changed. I would like to achieve this both on SQL Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server CE 4.0.

ALTER TABLE MyTable 
ALTER COLUMN TextColumn nvarchar(4000) --original size 2000

Columns in MyTable

Version rowversion NOT NULL
TextColumn nvarchar(2000) NOT NULL

No data in MyTable. TextColumn change by running this command, still all the rowversion values are updated, which is definitely not the expected behavior.

Is this possible or is there any workaround?

Edit:

To make it more clear I should add that the my purpose is to distribute db structure updates in a synchronized environment, where the server is SQL Server 2008 R2 and sync clients are SQL CE 4.0.

Edit 2: This problem is present only on SQL Compact. On normal SQL Server it works as expected.

Edit 3: Filled as a bug on Microsoft Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/816991/unexpected-sql-ce-4-0-rowversion-value-behavior-with-alter-column

Answer 1

I am able to repro your issue, and do not know of any workaround. One option would be to rely on something else than rowversion values for sync purposes.