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AskSQLTeam
Ask SQLTeam Question
0 Posts |
 Posted - 2002-04-17 : 09:38:01
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| Ashley writes "Is there any SQL statement I can write to check to see if a column exists within a table without getting an error message? I have tried "exists" and all the other basic stuff I could think of. This is for debugging purposes, and would really shorten the task ahead of me. Thanks!" |
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leeholden
Starting Member
34 Posts |
Posted - 2002-04-17 : 09:50:38
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| you can query syscolumns (it's documented) to see if it exists.I'm sure there will be some purists saying that you shouldn't query system tables though. |
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Nazim
A custom title
1408 Posts |
Posted - 2002-04-17 : 09:57:18
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| Am gulity of quering them lot of times. its better not to as the schema can change in future versions.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS should help to query for existence of columns.but Ashley, AFAIK you cant really do that using normal querying. Dynamic Sql should be of good help.-------------------------------------------------------------- |
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dsdeming
479 Posts |
Posted - 2002-04-17 : 12:49:48
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| This should help:use northwinddeclare @table sysname, @column sysnameset @table = 'Invoices'set @column = 'CustomerID'if exists( select * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where table_name = @table and column_name = @column)print 'y'elseprint 'n'set @column = 'foo'if exists( select * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where table_name = @table and column_name = @column)print 'y'elseprint 'n' |
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How to write a query that checks if a column exists?