Question

Has anyone an idea about how to get Table name and column name using sql server system tables?

Example : I know that a table somewhere in my database has a field containing an ID = 1125412.

Is there a way to run a global query on the database, to get column name and table name where this data exists.

Is this doable, if you know a column name, and you want to know the table name to where it belongs?

Answer 1

This is super nasty, but it will work:

-- Finding all tables with an ID column
SELECT SCHEMA_NAME(T.schema_id) SchemaName,
       T.name TableName
INTO #FoundTables
FROM sys.tables T INNER JOIN
     sys.columns C ON T.object_id = C.object_id
WHERE C.name = 'ID';

DECLARE @SchemaName NVarChar(100),
        @TableName NVarChar(100),
        @SQL NVarChar(2000);
-- Dynamically build a SELECT statement
WHILE (EXISTS (SELECT * FROM #FoundTables)) BEGIN
  SELECT TOP 1 @SchemaName = SchemaName, @TableName = TableName,
    @SQL = 'SELECT * FROM $SchemaName.$TableName WHERE ID = 1125412;'
  FROM #FoundTables;

  SELECT @SQL =
    REPLACE(REPLACE(@SQL, '$SchemaName', @SchemaName), '$TableName', @TableName);
  EXEC (@SQL);

  DELETE FROM #FoundTables
  WHERE SchemaName = @SchemaName
    AND TableName = @TableName;
END;

DROP TABLE #FoundTables;