Question

Is it possible to search and replace all occurrences of a string in all columns in all tables of a database? I use Microsoft SQL Server.

Answer 1

Not easily, though I can thing of two ways to do it:

1. Write a series of stored procedures that identify all varchar and text columns of all tables, and generate individual update statements for each column of each table of the form “UPDATE foo SET BAR = REPLACE(BAR,’foobar’,’quux’)”. This will probably involve a lot of queries against the system tables, with a lot of experimentation — Microsoft doesn’t go out of its way to document this stuff.
2. Export the entire database to a single text file, do a search/replace on that, and then re-import the entire database. Given that you’re using MS SQL Server, this is actually the easier approach. Microsoft created the Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard for other reasons, but it makes a fine tool for exporting all of the tables of a SQL Server database as a text file containing pure SQL DDL and DML. Run the tool to export all of the tables for a database, edit the resulting file as you need, and then feed the file back to sqlcmd to recreate the database.

Given a choice, I’d use the second method, as long as the DPW works with your version of SQL Server. The last time I used the tool, it met my needs (MS SQL Server 2000 / 2005) but it had some quirks when working with database Roles.