[NF] SQL - search all fields in all records in all tables - ProFox

26 Jul 2019


      I didn't write this, nor do I know it's source. But some of our devs are
treating it like a new toy so I thought I would pass it along in case
someone could find it useful. Probably old old news to a lot of you.
One of our clients got a public records thing and wanted to search all
fields in all tables for a particular string, in this case a name.
I'd done this in VFP but never had a need for it in SQL. No one here is
saying it doesn't work but YMMV.
First two lines are the seed for the DB and the string to search for:
USE DATABASE_NAME
DECLARE @SearchStr nvarchar(100) = 'SEARCH_TEXT'
DECLARE @Results TABLE (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', 'int', 'decimal')
                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
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