December 8, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item How to get all MSSQL database columns names, data types and length
December 9, 2010 at 2:33 am
My way... Since SQL Server 2005 I prefer SYS.Tables before sysobjects with type = 'U'. Although the execution plan looks similar, has some differences. Which returns the best results? I don't know.
SELECT QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(tb.[schema_id])) AS 'Schema'
,QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME(tb.[OBJECT_ID])) AS 'Table'
,C.NAME as 'Column'
,T.name AS 'Type'
,C.max_length
,C.is_nullable
FROM SYS.COLUMNS C INNER JOIN SYS.TABLES tb ON tb.[object_id] = C.[object_id]
INNER JOIN SYS.TYPES T ON C.system_type_id = T.user_type_id
WHERE tb.[is_ms_shipped] = 0
ORDER BY tb.[Name]
December 9, 2010 at 7:04 am
samehzagloul
I ran the query against AdventureWorks and the join to data type included column names as a type
Here is a sample of the output
TableNameColumnNameNameLength
AddressAddressIDint4
AddressAddressLine1nvarchar120
AddressAddressLine1AccountNumber120
AddressAddressLine1Name120
AddressAddressLine1OrderNumber120
AddressAddressLine1Phone120
AddressAddressLine2nvarchar120
AddressAddressLine2AccountNumber120
AddressAddressLine2Name120
AddressAddressLine2OrderNumber120
AddressAddressLine2Phone120
David Bird
December 9, 2010 at 8:40 am
No they're not columns, they're types, user defined types.
In the Object Explorer window in SSMS.
Open Programmability->Types->User Defined Types
and you'll see them.
The problem is that the join in the query is wrong where it joins on the xtype column of systypes it should use xusertype instead.
December 9, 2010 at 11:18 am
The problem is that the join in the query is wrong where it joins on the xtype column of systypes it should use xusertype instead.
[font="Courier New"]Did you try the query before you say there was a wrong in the join[/font]
December 10, 2010 at 2:24 am
samehzagloul (12/9/2010)
The problem is that the join in the query is wrong where it joins on the xtype column of systypes it should use xusertype instead.
[font="Courier New"]Did you try the query before you say there was a wrong in the join[/font]
Yes, I did. Please don't shout.
December 10, 2010 at 2:29 am
samehzagloul (12/9/2010)
The problem is that the join in the query is wrong where it joins on the xtype column of systypes it should use xusertype instead.
[font="Courier New"]Did you try the query before you say there was a wrong in the join[/font]
Please don't take offence, I was merely pointing out that if there are user defined datatypes in the databse then joining on the xtype column in systypes will return incorrect results (too many rows) as the xtype column is not unique in this case. You need to join on the xusertype column instead which is unique.
If you look at the systypes table in the AdventureWorks database you will see why there is a problem.
December 13, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Actually I have a few other concerns with these scripts:
- unicode columns will show up as double length, and numeric columns will be unobvious because the max_length column used is actually a byte length, not character or digit length.
- numeric columns should use xprec, xscale for syscolumns, or precision, scale for sys.columns because of the same reason, max_length is a byte count
so I tend to use:
SELECT table_schema, table_name, column_name, data_type, character_maximum_length,
is_nullable, column_default, numeric_precision, numeric_scale
FROM information_schema.columns
ORDER BY table_schema, table_name, ordinal_position
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