Question

I am using .NET with sql/oracle server.

I want to get the schema(datatype,columnname,etc…) of the sql result from:

SELECT * 
  FROM tablename 

…or:

SELECT customername, companyname 
  FROM tablename

I do not want to execute for the real data. I just want to get the metadata behind that result without executing this statement… It worked in C++ but how in Ado.Net with C# ?

Answer 1

Create a Command, then look at ExecuteReader, and specifically, the CommandBehaviour SchemaOnly:

The query returns column information only.

The documenations also mentions some SQL Server specifics, but handily I was just browsing the OracleClient classes, and they seem to respect this flag also. I don’t know if it’s guaranteed for other database providers.