Question

I have a table in my warehouse that has columns in all uppercase. It scripts out like this:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Outlet](
    [OUTLET_KEY] [varchar](10) NOT NULL,
    [OUTLET] [varchar](8) NULL,
    [CITY_CODE] [varchar](4) NULL,
    [OUTLET_NAME] [varchar](25) NULL,
    [COUNTRY_CODE] [varchar](3) NULL,
    [EXTENDED_CATEGORY_CODE] [varchar](2) NULL,
    [PHONE_NUMBER] [varchar](17) NULL
) ON [PRIMARY]

I want to change the case of the columns in the table to a much more readable format

• Outlet_Key
• Outlet
• City_Code
• Outlet_Name
• Country_Code …….

There are about 15 tables and about 200 columns. How do I change the case for all of them?

Answer 1

Give this a shot:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Get_Proper_Cased_String
(@my_string VARCHAR(MAX))
RETURNS VARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE
        @work_string    VARCHAR(MAX),
        @final_string   VARCHAR(MAX),
        @position       SMALLINT

    SET @final_string = ''
    SET @position = CHARINDEX(' ', @my_string)

    WHILE (@position > 0)
    BEGIN
        SET @work_string = LEFT(@my_string, @position - 1)

        IF (@work_string <> '')
            SET @final_string = @final_string + ' ' + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@work_string, 1, 1)) + LOWER(SUBSTRING(@work_string, 2, LEN(@work_string) - 1))

        SET @my_string = RIGHT(@my_string, LEN(@my_string) - @position)

        SET @position = CHARINDEX(' ', @my_string)
    END

    /* changed this to LTRIM to remove trailing space that was getting converted to underscore */
    SET @final_string = LTRIM (@final_string + ' ' + UPPER(SUBSTRING(@my_string, 1, 1)) + LOWER(SUBSTRING(@my_string, 2, LEN(@my_string) - 1)))

    RETURN @final_string
END
GO

SELECT
     'EXEC sp_rename ''' + O.name + '.' + C.name + ''', ''' + REPLACE(dbo.Get_Proper_Cased_String(REPLACE(C.name, '_', ' ')), ' ', '_') + ''', ''COLUMN'''
FROM
    sys.objects O
INNER JOIN sys.columns C ON
    C.object_id = O.object_id
WHERE
    O.object_id = OBJECT_ID('<table_name>')

This code assumes that the only non-character value that you have is “_” and that you don’t have successive underscores (i.e., MY____COLUMN would give the wrong results).