Question

I’m looking to find out what kind of ‘create table’ statement I would need to create a given table from scratch. I’m especially interested in primary key constraints, unique constraints, foreign key constraints and column names.

How would I do this in Oracle and/or SQL Server?

Oddly enough, the only connection I have to the database is an ODBC connection from a Linux box. Though for Oracle I can almost certainly get SQL*Plus up and running.

Answer 1

In Oracle use

select dbms_metadata.get_ddl('TABLE','DEMO_ORDERS') from dual;

and it will return something like

  CREATE TABLE "OWNER"."DEMO_ORDERS" 
   (    "ORDER_ID" NUMBER NOT NULL ENABLE, 
    "CUSTOMER_ID" NUMBER NOT NULL ENABLE, 
    "ORDER_TOTAL" NUMBER(8,2), 
    "ORDER_TIMESTAMP" DATE, 
    "USER_ID" NUMBER, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDER_TOTAL_MIN" CHECK (order_total >= 0) ENABLE, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDER_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("ORDER_ID")
  USING INDEX PCTFREE 10 INITRANS 2 MAXTRANS 255 COMPUTE STATISTICS 
  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 NEXT 1048576 MINEXTENTS 1 MAXEXTENTS 2147483645
  PCTINCREASE 0 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT)
  TABLESPACE "USERS"  ENABLE, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDERS_CUSTOMER_ID_FK" FOREIGN KEY ("CUSTOMER_ID")
      REFERENCES "OWNER"."DEMO_CUSTOMERS" ("CUSTOMER_ID") ENABLE, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDERS_USER_ID_FK" FOREIGN KEY ("USER_ID")
      REFERENCES "OWNER"."DEMO_USERS" ("USER_ID") ENABLE
   ) PCTFREE 10 PCTUSED 40 INITRANS 1 MAXTRANS 255 NOCOMPRESS LOGGING
  STORAGE(INITIAL 65536 NEXT 1048576 MINEXTENTS 1 MAXEXTENTS 2147483645
  PCTINCREASE 0 FREELISTS 1 FREELIST GROUPS 1 BUFFER_POOL DEFAULT)
  TABLESPACE "USERS" 

You can use various settings to filter in or out bits you don’t want.

begin
 DBMS_METADATA.SET_TRANSFORM_PARAM(DBMS_METADATA.SESSION_TRANSFORM,'STORAGE',false);
 DBMS_METADATA.SET_TRANSFORM_PARAM(DBMS_METADATA.SESSION_TRANSFORM,'PRETTY',true);
 DBMS_METADATA.SET_TRANSFORM_PARAM(DBMS_METADATA.SESSION_TRANSFORM,
       'SQLTERMINATOR',true);
 DBMS_METADATA.SET_TRANSFORM_PARAM(DBMS_METADATA.SESSION_TRANSFORM, 
       'SEGMENT_ATTRIBUTES',false);
end;

will give

  CREATE TABLE "OWNER"."DEMO_ORDERS" 
   (    "ORDER_ID" NUMBER NOT NULL ENABLE, 
    "CUSTOMER_ID" NUMBER NOT NULL ENABLE, 
    "ORDER_TOTAL" NUMBER(8,2), 
    "ORDER_TIMESTAMP" DATE, 
    "USER_ID" NUMBER, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDER_TOTAL_MIN" CHECK (order_total >= 0) ENABLE, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDER_PK" PRIMARY KEY ("ORDER_ID") ENABLE, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDERS_CUSTOMER_ID_FK" FOREIGN KEY ("CUSTOMER_ID")
      REFERENCES "OWNER"."DEMO_CUSTOMERS" ("CUSTOMER_ID") ENABLE, 
     CONSTRAINT "DEMO_ORDERS_USER_ID_FK" FOREIGN KEY ("USER_ID")
      REFERENCES "OWNER"."DEMO_USERS" ("USER_ID") ENABLE
   ) ;