In SQL Server given a Table/View how can you generate a definition of the Table/View in the form:
C1 int,
C2 varchar(20),
C3 double
The information required to do it is contained in the meta-tables of SQL Server but is there a standard script / IDE faciltity to output the data contained there in the form described above ?.
For the curious I want this as I have to maintain a number of SP's which contain Table objects (that is a form of temporary table used by SQL Server). The Table objects need to match the definition of Tables or Views already in the database - it would make life a lot easier if these definitions could be generated automatically.
Here is an example of listing the names and types of columns in a table:
select
COLUMN_NAME,
COLUMN_DEFAULT,
IS_NULLABLE,
DATA_TYPE,
CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH,
NUMERIC_PRECISION,
NUMERIC_SCALE
from
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
where
TABLE_NAME = 'YOUR_TABLE_NAME_HERE'
order by
Ordinal_Position
Generating DDL from that information is more difficult. There seems to be some suggestions at SQLTeam
If you want to duplpicate a table definition you could use:
select top 0
*
into
newtable
from
mytable
Edit: Sorry, just re-read your question, and realised this might not answer it. Could you be clear on what you are after, do you want an exact duplicate of the table definition, or a table that contains information about the tables definition?
Thanks for your replies. Yes I do want an exact duplicate of the DDL but I've realised I misstated exactly what I needed. It's DDL which will create a temporary table which will match the columns of a view.
I realised this in looking at Duckworths suggestion - which is good but unfortunately doesn't cover the case of a view.
SELECT VIEWDEFINITION FROM
INFORMATIONSCHEMA.VIEWS
... will give you a list of columns in a view and (assuming that all columns in the view are derived directly from a table) it should then be possible to use an amended version of Duckworths suggestion to pull together the relevant DLL.
I'm just amazed it's not easier ! I was expecting someone to tell me that there was a well established routine to do this given the TABLE objects need to have all columns full defined (rather than the way Oracle does it which is to say - "give me something which looks like table X".
Anyway thanks again for help and any further suggestions welcomed.
In this posting to another question I've got a DB reverse engineering script that will do tables, views, PK, UK and index definitions and foreign keys. This one is for SQL Server 2005 and is a port of one I originally wrote for SQL Server 2000. If you need a SQL Server 2000 version add a comment to this post and I'll post it up here.
Related
I´m quite new to the Oracle SQL Developer. I try to handle a big database and I need to define views. Therefore, I need the relationships of some tables. with the relational models of the Browser, I´m able to show ALL relationships of the table, which is quite confusing.
Is there a way to show the ralationships of just one column?
I want to pick the table and the column and I want to see to which other tables the column is connected.
Thank you.
My suggestion:
First find out in which tables the column name has been used :
select * from all_tab_columns where column_name='COLUMN_NAME';
And then you can see constraints defined for the respective columns in that tables
new to stack overflow as my job has me doing more SQL querying than I'm use to (super basic queries). And since this is the best online resource....:)
Preamble...my company has developed an SQL database that contains a giant table of tables. In other words, they extracted a series of tables (200+) from external sources and put them all into one massive table to be used for reporting purposes in other systems. For example, if one of these external tables has 5 fields and 10 rows of data, that translates to 50 rows in this 'table of tables' (Table1, Field1, Value...Table1, Field2, Value....TableX, FieldX, Value...etc.)
Requirement...I need to 'pivot' the data for the purposes of getting a list of all the fields in all the tables. In other words ignore the values (just TableX, FieldX). I need to do this in order to find 'like' fields across all the tables. Being new to using PIVOT in SQL queries, I know the basic structure of the SQL query, but I'm getting lost in the organization of it. Maybe I don't even use PIVOT. Here's what I have...
SELECT * from (
SELECT [FieldName],[iModelTable]
FROM [H352090DataMart].[dbo].[HA_iModelTableData]
PIVOT (MAX([FieldName]) FOR [iTableName] IN
(
--not sure what would go here if anything
)
) AS pvt
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Austin.
Nevermind. I figured it out. Is was as simple as using the DISTINCT function. As I said, I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to scripting. So for those who read this post, the answer is as follows (the ORDER BY is extra)...
SELECT DISTINCT
[iModelTable]
,[FieldName]
FROM [H352090DataMart].[dbo].[HA_iModelTableData]
ORDER BY iModelTable
I am able to DROP and CREATE a temporary table but when I do a select, it doesn't recognize the object. I know it's there but how can I access it?
FYI, I have multiple databases in SQL Server (2008). I tried the below but it doesn't work.
SELECT *
FROM tempdb..#TBL_IMPORT
Usually to access tables I have to type this: dbname.dbo.tablename
Any clue? Thank you.
With the amount of information given, the answer is in the comments.
If you would like to query a temp table from a second session, you'll need to create the temp table as a global temp table.
select *
into ##MyGlobalTable
from SourceTable
If you're using SSMS you will want to use the same window you create the temp table in if not using a global temp table. If you're using a secondary application you'll want to validate you're using the same SPID.
Other approaches you may be interested in would include CTEs (common table expressions) and variable tables. Google will have a wide assortment of assistance, or you could update your question here.
I go through a tutorial on hierachyid and for their explanation they use the following query on the advantureworks2012
Select * From HumanRessources.Employee
I generated the diagram and can find a table called employee but no HumanRessources one. .
I tried to find a documentation of the AW2012 db but could only find one of the AW2008 which does not have HumanRessources.
My question: What is HumanRessources, since it is not a table I do not understand what it is and how this is implemented?
HumanResources is indeed the schema, with Employee being the table name.
You would therefore query the table using SELECT * FROM HumanResources.Employee;
You might find the official data dictionary useful here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms124438(v=sql.100).aspx
Alternatively, see the following diagram for an overview of the AdventureWorks2008 database ( it's almost identical to 2012). Notice the shaded areas represent the different schemas.
Is there any way to get information about the updated/deleted tables in a trigger, meaning
which columns are in the inserted/deleted tables?
which data types do they have?
The background for this question is: I would like to create a 'generic' trigger which can be used without having need to be adapted for the table in question.
Dummy code:
foreach column in inserted table
get column name and data type and column (e.g. to exclude text columns or columns with a special name)
if the value has changed do some logging into another table
Unfortunately I could not find the needed information so far; I have to admit that I don't know the proper key words which have to be used.
It would even be helpful to get a list of functions (e.g. UPDATE()) which can be used in triggers to query information about the inserted/deleted tables.
The TSQL code should work on MS SQL Server >= 2008.
TIA