Question

I’m working with a lot of databases that are the same so I am using the sp_MSforeachdb procedure so that I can retrieve information from a table.

The problem I have encountered is that there are other databases on the box that don’t have the table, so I’m throwing invalid object errors.

Here is What I have at the moment, I’m filtering LoginDatabase because it has the same table but I don’t want that in the query.

My question is, how can I restrict it just to the databases with the table I want to get information back from.

SET NOCOUNT ON

CREATE TABLE #tmpData
(
    DbName VARCHAR(30),
    DbVersion FLOAT
)

exec sp_msforeachdb @command1='
    USE ?;

    INSERT INTO #tmpData
    SELECT ''?'', (SELECT Setting 
        FROM ?.dbo.gl_SysParams 
        WHERE Keyword = ''DatabaseSchema'')
    FROM sysobjects o
    WHERE type=''U'' 
    AND [name] = ''gl_SysParams'' 
    AND ''?'' <> ''LoginDatabase'' ORDER BY [name]
    '   

SET NOCOUNT OFF

SELECT DbName, DbVersion FROM #tmpData ORDER BY DbName

DROP TABLE #tmpData

Answer 1

You could use a call to sp_MSforeachtable within each database, where you use the @WhereAnd parameter to filter down to just the table you’re interested in – it won’t exist in the database you’re not interested in, so sp_MSforeachtable will run 0 times in there, and 1 time in each database with the table.

Edit Simple example just run against a random server of mine, where I knew only one database had a tblClient table, with a ClientID column (forgive the naming):

create table #t (
    ID int not null
)
exec sp_MSforeachdb 'use ? exec sp_MSforeachtable ''insert into #t(ID) select ClientID from ~'',''~'',@whereand=''and o.name=''''tblClient''''''','?'
select * from #t
drop table #t