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Everyone has a favourite system stored procedure (you do, don't you?). But five? That's the subject of this blog, anyway.
- My 5 favourite SQL system stored procedures!
- Listing the contents of a procedure or function (sp_helptext) (this blog)
- Using sp_datatype_info to get the data type of a variable
- Which tables/procedures depend on which? (sp_depends)
- Listing the columns in a table (sp_columns)
- Using sp_help to get help on a table, procedure, column, etc
Posted by Andy Brown on 03 February 2017
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Listing the contents of a procedure or function (sp_helptext)
This has to be the most fun system stored procedure, although maybe I just think so because I don't get out enough. Let's suppose you've created a stored procedure:
CREATE PROC spExample
AS
-- list out all films
SELECT
f.Title
, f.OscarWins AS Oscars
, f.RunTimeMinutes AS RunTime
FROM
Film AS f
ORDER BY
f.Title
You now want to find all the lines containing commas. So you use sp_helptext:
-- analyse this procedure
sp_helptext 'spExample'
The results are a bit weird:
The lines which comprise your stored procedure!
You could put the results in a temporary table, and use this to show all the lines containing commas:
DECLARE @lines TABLE(
LineText VARCHAR(MAX)
)
-- put lines of procedure into table
INSERT INTO @lines
EXEC sp_helptext 'spExample'
-- now show lines beginning with commas
SELECT
LineText
FROM
@lines
WHERE
LineText LIKE '%,%'
The results are impressive:
The two lines containing commas.
I'm not QUITE sure how you'd use this information, but sometimes the fun is in the answer, not how it's used! For how to write your own stored procedures, consider booking a place on our online Advanced SQL course.
- My 5 favourite SQL system stored procedures!
- Listing the contents of a procedure or function (sp_helptext) (this blog)
- Using sp_datatype_info to get the data type of a variable
- Which tables/procedures depend on which? (sp_depends)
- Listing the columns in a table (sp_columns)
- Using sp_help to get help on a table, procedure, column, etc