Question

I don’t know much about the MS world, but now it happens to be that I have to use SQL Server Management Studio 2008.

My problem: I have a column in a table, and I need to see all the stored procedures that may be acting on it.

I tried right-clicking and going ‘View Dependencies’ but that doesn’t seem to be returning everything that it should be.

Questions like this one: SQL Server Dependencies have answers that offer 3 types of solutions

1. Paid third party tools.
2. Writing your own scripts.
3. Exporting everything into text files and grepping them.

WTF? Am I missing something obvious? Is that actually how things work? I would imagine that this is a very common use case: you want to alter table and you want to make sure you won’t break anything. Or if say you’re looking at a new project with a DB for the first time and you want to see how certain columns get populated with stored procedures. Is there actually no quick and easy built-in workflow to do this?

Answer 1

If you need to find database objects (e.g. tables, columns, triggers) by name – have a look at the FREE Red-Gate tool called SQL Search which does this – it searches your entire database for any kind of string(s).

It’s a great must-have tool for any DBA or database developer – did I already mention it’s absolutely FREE to use for any kind of use??