Question

I’m using SQL Server 2005 and am logged in as sa. I would like to query every table in my database for whether it has a certain column name. And if so append every row where (columnNameValue = someValue) to a results table. Then return said results table.

There are a few similar problems with solutions out there. Notably I can use sp_MSForeachTable for this but it lacks any kind of documentation. I can use SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES to get a list of all the tables.

The following solution (link text) will go every table & every column to find a certain value in the cell. Which is different from finding a certain value in the cell IF that column is a certain columnName.

Writing a nested while statement should be possible but are there any inbuilt commands to run queries like this?

Pseudo-Code if it helps :

foreach(table in tableList) {
    if (table.hasColumnName(SOME_COLUMN) {
       EXEC ('SELECT * FROM table WHERE (SOME_COLUMN = SOME_VALUE)')
    }
}

[Edit]

Rather then having a single results set I would like to be a single result per table as long as the select returns at least one row. This should give a very large amount of different results as expecting a join or union to work is unrealistic.

If possible I would like to append the tablename to start of each result.

I have a simple query below that gets all the results but It will display empty tables and doesnt give any visual indication in individual results as to what table it belongs to:

[Further Edit]

Updated the query below to include the IF EXIST check that removes NULL results & the select name AS source column to add the table source to the results thanks to @Martin

DECLARE @COLUMN_VALUE nvarchar(512), @VALUE nvarchar(10);

SET @COLUMN_VALUE = 'id'
SET @VALUE = '0';

DECLARE @TABLE_NAME nvarchar(512), @COLUMN_NAME nvarchar(512), @QUERY nvarchar(512);

SET @TABLE_NAME = '';

WHILE @TABLE_NAME IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
    SET @TABLE_NAME =
    (
        SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME))
        FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
        WHERE QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME) > @TABLE_NAME
    );
    PRINT 'Table name : ' + @TABLE_NAME;
    SET @COLUMN_NAME = 
    (
        SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME))
        FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
        WHERE (TABLE_NAME = PARSENAME(@TABLE_NAME, 1))
            AND (COLUMN_NAME = @COLUMN_VALUE)

    );
    PRINT 'Column name : ' + @COLUMN_NAME;
    IF @COLUMN_NAME IS NOT NULL 
    BEGIN
        SET @QUERY = 
            'SELECT ''' + @TABLE_NAME + ''' AS Source, * ' +
            'FROM ' + @TABLE_NAME + ' ' +
            'WHERE (' + @COLUMN_NAME + ' = ' + @VALUE + ')'
        EXEC
        (
            'IF EXISTS(' + @QUERY + ') ' + @QUERY
        )
    END     
END

Answer 1

CREATE TABLE foo
(
SOME_COLUMN VARCHAR(10)
)

CREATE TABLE bar
(
SOME_COLUMN VARCHAR(10)
)

INSERT INTO bar VALUES ('SOME_VALUE')


DECLARE @Query nvarchar(max)

SELECT 
      @Query = isnull(@Query + ';','') + 
      'IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM ' + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id)) + '.' + 
      QUOTENAME(o.name) + ' WHERE SOME_COLUMN=''SOME_VALUE'')
      SELECT ''' + o.name +''' AS Source, * FROM ' + QUOTENAME(SCHEMA_NAME(schema_id)) + '.' + 
      QUOTENAME(o.name) + ' WHERE SOME_COLUMN=''SOME_VALUE'''
FROM sys.columns c 
JOIN sys.objects o
ON o.object_id = c.object_id
WHERE o.type IN ('U','V') AND c.name = 'SOME_COLUMN'

EXEC sp_executesql @Query