Having just returned from PASS, I needed to play catch up on a few things in a stored procedure that was being developed before I left. Being a little frazzled still, I could not for the life of me remember the name of the stored procedure where those things existed. I constantly find myself manually writing queries like this to find all references to a column, table, variable or concept:
SELECT [name]
FROM sys.procedures
WHERE OBJECT_DEFINITION(OBJECT_ID) LIKE '%string%';
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or
SELECT OBJECT_NAME([object_id])
FROM sys.sql_modules
WHERE [definition] LIKE '%string%';
|
Yes, I could rely on dependencies *sometimes* - but even when they are not broken, I am not always trying to find things that show up in a dependency chain.
Now the queries above are a little tedious to write, but not too bad. But there are other complications that can often add a little bit of effort:
- When dealing with multiple owners/schema this can be more complex, so I would always add:
SELECT OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id])
+ '.' + [name] ...
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- And in the case of poorly chosen identifiers (hey, this isn't always against my own systems!), I would add QUOTENAME:
SELECT QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id])
+ '.' + QUOTENAME([name]) ... |
- And of course I would want the results to allow me to quickly get at the definition for those stored procedures, so I would want sp_helptext as part of the results:
SELECT 'EXEC sp_helptext '''
+ QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id])
+ '.' + QUOTENAME([name]) + '''' ...
|
This all gets very tedious to type, so a while back I decided to implement a set of stock, utility procedures in all of my databases (and don't tell my clients, but I've added it to some of their systems, too). I wanted one for procedures specifically, and then one that will search sql_modules so that it picks up functions and triggers as well.
CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.Find_InSP
@string NVARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT
cmd = N'EXEC sp_helptext '''
+ QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]))
+ '.' + QUOTENAME([name]) + ''';'
FROM
sys.procedures
WHERE
OBJECT_DEFINITION([object_id]) LIKE N'%' + @string + '%'
ORDER BY
cmd;
END
GO
CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.Find_InModule
@string NVARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
SELECT
cmd = N'EXEC sp_helptext '''
+ QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]))
+ '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME([object_id])) + ''';'
FROM
sys.sql_modules
WHERE
[definition] LIKE N'%' + @string + '%'
ORDER BY
cmd;
END
GO
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Now when I run:
EXEC msdb.dbo.Find_InSP 'agent';
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I get the following results (and as an added bonus, I can use CTRL in the grid results to copy the sp_helptext commands only for the procedures I am interested in):
I have also added the procedures to the model database, so that they exist in all future databases that are created as well. Does this save me a ton of time on any given day? Of course not. But every shortcut helps, right? I hope these procedures are useful for you.