Question

We’re looking to do an update in several SQL Server databases to change all NULL values in a certain table to be empty strings instead of NULL. We’re potentially going to be doing this across hundreds of databases. The table name will always be the same, but the column names are variable based on how the front-end application is configured (don’t judge… I didn’t create this system).

Is there a way to do an update on all of these columns without knowing the column names ahead of time?

Answer 1

You can pass the name of the column in dynamic sql:

declare @sql nvarchar (1000);
set @sql = N'update table set ' + @column_name + '= ''''';

exec sp_executesql @sql;