Question

Is there a way to query the database to retrieve information about the schema of a table? I’m interested in just getting a list of the Column names and whether they are primary keys; is this possible? I don’t care about the type, just its name and whether it is a primary key.

Sample Table:

Table Organism
{
   primary: int ID;
   int Kingdom;
   int Phylum;
   int Class;
   int Genus;
   int Species;
   nvarchar(50) Name;
}

Sample Usage:

List<Tuple<string, bool>> t = ReadTable("Organism");
t.ForEach(x => Console.WriteLine(x.Item2 ? x.Item2 + ": " + x.Item1 : x.Item1));

Sample Output:

True ID
Kingdom
Phylum
Class
Genus
Species
Name

I am using C#4.0 and SQL Server 2008 R2. I think this should be possible using the system tables but I don’t know how to do it.

Answer 1

select col.*
from sys.columns col
join sys.tables tab on col.object_id = tab.object_id
where tab.name = @tabName
order by col.column_id

The system views contain a wealth of data and they are easy to use.