Saturday, October 25, 2008

How to search all columns of all tables in a database for a keyword?

BY http://vyaskn.tripod.com/search_all_columns_in_all_tables.htm

This procedure accepts a search string as input parameter, goes and searches all char, varchar, nchar, nvarchar columns of all tables (only user created tables. System tables are excluded), owned by all users in the current database. Feel free to extend this procedure to search other datatypes.

The output of this stored procedure contains two columns:

- 1) The table name and column name in which the search string was found
- 2) The actual content/value of the column (Only the first 3630 characters are displayed)

Here's a word of caution, before you go ahead and run this procedure. Though this procedure is quite quick on smaller databases, it could take hours to complete, on a large database with too many character columns and a huge number of rows. So, if you are trying to run it on a large database, be prepared to wait (I did use the locking hint NOLOCK to reduce any locking). It is efficient to use Full-Text search feature for free text searching, but it doesn't make sense for this type of ad-hoc requirements.

Create this procedure in the required database and here is how you run it:

--To search all columns of all tables in Pubs database for the keyword "Computer"
EXEC SearchAllTables 'Computer'
GO

Here is the complete stored procedure code:


CREATE PROC SearchAllTables
(
@SearchStr nvarchar(100)
)
AS
BEGIN

-- Copyright © 2002 Narayana Vyas Kondreddi. All rights reserved.
-- Purpose: To search all columns of all tables for a given search string
-- Written by: Narayana Vyas Kondreddi
-- Site: http://vyaskn.tripod.com
-- Tested on: SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000
-- Date modified: 28th July 2002 22:50 GMT


CREATE TABLE #Results (ColumnName nvarchar(370), ColumnValue nvarchar(3630))

SET NOCOUNT ON

DECLARE @TableName nvarchar(256), @ColumnName nvarchar(128), @SearchStr2 nvarchar(110)
SET @TableName = ''
SET @SearchStr2 = QUOTENAME('%' + @SearchStr + '%','''')

WHILE @TableName IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
SET @ColumnName = ''
SET @TableName =
(
SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME))
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
AND QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME) > @TableName
AND OBJECTPROPERTY(
OBJECT_ID(
QUOTENAME(TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' + QUOTENAME(TABLE_NAME)
), 'IsMSShipped'
) = 0
)

WHILE (@TableName IS NOT NULL) AND (@ColumnName IS NOT NULL)
BEGIN
SET @ColumnName =
(
SELECT MIN(QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME))
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = PARSENAME(@TableName, 2)
AND TABLE_NAME = PARSENAME(@TableName, 1)
AND DATA_TYPE IN ('char', 'varchar', 'nchar', 'nvarchar')
AND QUOTENAME(COLUMN_NAME) > @ColumnName
)

IF @ColumnName IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
INSERT INTO #Results
EXEC
(
'SELECT ''' + @TableName + '.' + @ColumnName + ''', LEFT(' + @ColumnName + ', 3630)
FROM ' + @TableName + ' (NOLOCK) ' +
' WHERE ' + @ColumnName + ' LIKE ' + @SearchStr2
)
END
END
END

SELECT ColumnName, ColumnValue FROM #Results
END

Regards,
--
Mohammad R. Daoud
MCP, MCBMSP, MCTS, MCBMSS
Software Development Manager
+962 - 79 - 999 65 85
Dynamics Innovations
daoudm@dynamicsinnovations.com
http://www.dynamicsinnovations.com/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It only works with Strings and not with numbers

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