Question

I’m connecting to an SQL Server 2008 database.

Using C#, I’d like to create a new table, with a name specified by me, which looks exactly like an existing table in that database. There are no foreign keys involved.

I have code like

DataTable table = con.GetSchema("Tables");
foreach (System.Data.DataRow row in table.Rows)
{
    foreach (System.Data.DataColumn col in table.Columns)

But it doesn’t get me very far. Do I really need to iterate over all the tables myself? Even if I identify the DataTable how do I clone it? I looked at DataTable.Clone but I can’t see how to set a new name and create that table on the database.

Answer 1

SMO (Server Management Objects) has a great deal of table scripting abilities. I would start there.

This article might help get you started.

If you want to avoid SMO, you can do it via a SQLDataReader, as follows (or something close to this):

using (SqlConnection cnn = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
    using (SqlCommand cmd = cnn.CreateCommand())
    {
       cmd.CommandText = "Execute some SQL Select here. Doesn't matter what. We just need a reference to the table.";
       cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
       cnn.Open();
       using (SqlDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.KeyInfo))
       {
          schema = rdr.GetSchemaTable();
       }
    cnn.Close();
    }
}