Question

In most RDBMS, the meta-model is “self contained”, which means that I can find out the model of the meta-model by browsing the meta-model itself. This doesn’t seem to be the case with SQL Server. What I want to do is this:

SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'INFORMATION_SCHEMA'

That way, I can discover the INFORMATION_SCHEMA schema itself.

Is there any grant/permission/login setting that I have to configure in order to make the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views be “self contained”?

Answer 1

Don’t think this is possible.

The definition of the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES view is

CREATE VIEW [INFORMATION_SCHEMA].[TABLES]
AS 
SELECT
    DB_NAME()           AS TABLE_CATALOG,
    s.name              AS TABLE_SCHEMA,
    o.name              AS TABLE_NAME,
    CASE o.type
        WHEN 'U' THEN 'BASE TABLE'
        WHEN 'V' THEN 'VIEW'
    END             AS TABLE_TYPE
FROM
    sys.objects o LEFT JOIN sys.schemas s
    ON s.schema_id = o.schema_id
WHERE
    o.type IN ('U', 'V')

so it pulls its information from sys.objects however this in turn contains nothing about the INFORMATION_SCHEMA objects.

The metadata for these is accessed via sys.system_objects instead.