Question

How do I get the schema name of the objects in the table “sys.all_objects?”

Using the OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME function returns “sys” when I know the schema is dbo…

select OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(o.schema_id),* from sys.all_objects o

I don’t want to use another view but I can join to other tables if necessary.

Answer 1

Are you talking about system objects such as sp_helptext? You can call sp_helptext and other system objects using multiple formats and these are translated for you (mostly for backward compatibility reasons):

EXEC sp_helptext 'sp_helptext';
EXEC dbo.sp_helptext 'sp_helptext';
EXEC sys.sp_helptext 'sp_helptext';

SELECT * FROM sysobjects;
SELECT * FROM dbo.sysobjects;
SELECT * FROM sys.sysobjects;    

But the object can only belong to one schema. In this case it is sys even if it answers to dbo as well.

If you have user objects that are showing up as sys, please let us know what they are. If you are just trying to track down user objects, perhaps you named something as dbo.foo that also exists under the sys schema. I might suggest sys.objects instead of sys.all_objects if you don’t want to return system objects.

EDIT:

And as Ray pointed out, you are passing schema_id to the function. The documentation shows you need to pass object_id, not schema_id. So either do one of the following:

SELECT OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME(o.[object_id]),* FROM sys.all_objects o;

-- or

SELECT SCHEMA_NAME(o.[schema_id]),* FROM sys.all_objects o;

Personally, I prefer a join, e.g.:

SELECT s.name, o.* FROM sys.all_objects AS o;
  INNER JOIN sys.schemas AS s
  ON o.[schema_id] = s.[schema_id];

Why? Because this query can work across databases, whereas several of the metadata functions will return NULL or – even worse – the wrong object when called from a different database.