Question

I have access to a MS SQL Server with MS Access via ODBC and I want to display the table names, their column names and the number of rows per table. The table names are stored in a table named “sys_tables”, the column names in “sys_columns”. Unfornunately the number of rows per table has to be counted. As I’m not experienced in SQL, my first try is not working:

SELECT t.name, c.name, t.object_id, x.cnt
FROM sys_tables AS t INNER JOIN sys_columns AS c ON t.object_id = c.object_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN (SELECT COUNT(*) AS cnt FROM @t.name AS tbl ON tbl.cnt > 0) AS x

What is the right way to use a computed string in a SELECT as table name? Can I do a sub select that selects all rows without real relation?

Answer 1

You cannot use a variable for a table name. The only workaround is dynamic SQL.

However, I suspect that there’s a table somewhere in sys which gives the row count for each table, though it may not be kept perfectly up-to-date.