Question

First, I have created a table called Placemarks containing a column of type ‘geography’.

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Placemarks](
[ID] [int] NOT NULL,
[Name] [nvarchar](50) NOT NULL,
[Location] [geography] NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT [PK_Placemarks] 
    PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED([ID] ASC)
)

Then, I use the following query in a stored procedure to get a list of all columns in the table with their data types.

SELECT 
   b.name, c.name as TypeName, b.length, b.isnullable, b.collation, b.xprec, b.xscale
FROM sysobjects a 
inner join syscolumns b on a.id = b.id 
inner join systypes c on b.xtype = c.xtype and c.name <> 'sysname' 
WHERE a.id = object_id(N'[dbo].[Placemarks]') 
and OBJECTPROPERTY(a.id, N'IsUserTable') = 1 
ORDER BY b.colId

The result of the query can be viewed here:

I am using this query in a stored procedure and need to get a single row for each column in my Placemarks table. I could filter out rows with TypeName = geometry or hierarchyid.

But I may use the geometry datatype in the future and want the query to be forward compatible. Any other ideas?

Answer 1

I would recommend using the newer sys system catalog views rather than the old sysobjects and similar views – those will be removed soon.

With this query, you should get your desired result:

SELECT
    c.name 'ColName',
    ty.Name 'TypeName',
    c.max_length, c.is_nullable, c.collation_name, c.precision, c.scale
FROM
    sys.tables t
INNER JOIN 
    sys.columns c ON t.object_id = c.object_id
INNER JOIN  
    sys.types ty ON c.user_type_id = ty.user_type_id
WHERE   
    t.name = 'Placemarks'

At least in my case, I now get:

ColName  TypeName    max_length is_nullable  collation_name  precision  scale
ID       int           4            0        NULL                10       0
Name     nvarchar    100            0        Latin1_General_CI_AS 0       0
Location geography    -1            0        NULL                 0       0