- Search database schema
- Search database data
Below I describe how to do both on a MS SQL database.
Search database schema It has been my experience that when doing any kind of database analysis it is nice to know dependencies between objects. Yes, I know you can get dependencies of an object. But what if what you are looking for is cross-database or you want to search on part of name of an object. Below is a very simple, but effective stored procedure (thank you Michael Lyczywek): create proc SearchSchema(@QueryText as varchar(200)) as select distinct name from sysobjects a inner join syscomments b on a.id = b.id where text like '%' + @QueryText + '%' go For example let's say you have a person table in Database1 and you want to find all references in Database2 to the Person table. To do so you could do the following: SearchSchema 'Person' Search database data Often when I have been tasked with making a change in an application, I need to figure out where that is in the database. The following stored procedure allows you to search all columns of all tables for a given value. This has been taken directly from an article by Narayana Vyas Kondreddi.
CREATE PROC SearchAllTables
(
@SearchStr nvarchar(100)
)
AS
BEGIN
-- Copyright © 2002 Narayana Vyas Kondreddi. All rights reserved.
-- Purpose: To search all columns of all tables for a given search string
-- Written by: Narayana Vyas Kondreddi
-- Site: http://vyaskn.tripod.com
-- Tested on: SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000
-- Date modified: 28th July 2002 22:50 GMT
CREATE TABLE #Results (ColumnName nvarchar(370), ColumnValue nvarchar(3630))
SET NOCOUNT ON
DECLARE @TableName nvarchar(256), @ColumnName nvarchar(128), @SearchStr2 nvarchar(110)
SET @TableName = ''
SET @SearchStr2 = QUOTENAME('%' + @SearchStr + '%','''')
WHILE @TableName IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
SET @ColumnName = ''
SET @TableName =
(
SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME))
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
AND QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME) > @TableName
AND OBJECTPROPERTY(
OBJECT_ID(
QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME)
), 'IsMSShipped'
) = 0
)
WHILE (@TableName IS NOT NULL) AND (@ColumnName IS NOT NULL)
BEGIN
SET @ColumnName =
(
SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME))
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = PARSENAME(@TableName, 2)
AND TABLE_NAME = PARSENAME(@TableName, 1)
AND DATA_TYPE IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')
AND QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME) > @ColumnName
)
IF @ColumnName IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
INSERT INTO #Results
EXEC
(
'SELECT ''' + @TableName + '.' + @ColumnName + ''', LEFT(' + @ColumnName + ', 3630)
FROM ' + @TableName + ' (NOLOCK) ' +
' WHERE ' + @ColumnName + ' LIKE ' + @SearchStr2
)
END
END
END
SELECT ColumnName, ColumnValue FROM #Results
END
To use this stored procedure you would do something like the following:
SearchAllTables 'Brent Vermilion'
7 comments:
Thanks, worked :)
Mindaugas,
Glad to hear it worked. Thanks for the feedback.
Brent
Many thanks; worked well on 2005 server;
for other newbees like me:
click on "New Query"
Paste the code ; then click Execute
Then again: "New Query"
type:
exec SearchAllTables "thewordyouwanttolookfor"
great, works on a db with several million records. Took me some time though
to search ntext and text fields
switch this line:
AND DATA_TYPE IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')
to this:
AND DATA_TYPE IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar', 'text', 'ntext')
and this line:
'SELECT ''' + @TableName + '.' + @ColumnName + ''', LEFT(' + @ColumnName + ', 3630)
to this:
'SELECT ''' + @TableName + '.' + @ColumnName + ''', LEFT(CAST(' + @ColumnName + ' AS NVARCHAR(4000) ), 3630)
very useful and inspiring, thanks ;)
very usefull!!!!!!!!
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