A cross-database table inventory is one of the most common ad hoc requests in any SQL Server environment — and one of the few queries that cannot be answered by staying inside a single database context. sys.databases exposes every online database on the instance; three-part name references to sys.tables inside dynamic …

Every UPDATE and DELETE on a system-versioned table leaves behind a complete, queryable history of the previous row — automatically, with no triggers and no audit-table plumbing. SQL Server records the period each row version was valid and answers point-in-time questions through a single FOR SYSTEM_TIME clause. This is …

Which columns make up a table's primary key, and in what order are they declared? For a single table, the system stored procedure sp_pkeys answers in one line; for a database-wide inventory, the catalog views behind it give you full control. This post covers both, from the quick lookup to the complete metadata query. …

The sys catalog views are the supported, forward-compatible way to read SQL Server metadata, and three of them — sys.objects, sys.tables, and sys.indexes — answer most day-to-day questions about what lives in a database. This script joins them into one inventory of every user table, its schema, its row count, and each …

Knowing how much space each table and each index consumes is the foundation of capacity planning, archive policy, and index cleanup decisions on any SQL Server instance. This T-SQL script reads the partition-level storage statistics out of sys.dm_db_partition_stats and reports the size of every index — clustered, …

"Where is every datetime column?" — "Which tables still use text instead of varchar(max)?" — "Are any columns using a deprecated user-defined type?" These are recurring DBA questions during schema audits, deprecation sweeps, and pre-migration assessments. This T-SQL script joins sys.columns to sys.types, sys.tables, …

Every database with foreign keys eventually needs a single inventory: every constraint, its parent table and column, and the referenced table and column on the other side. This T-SQL script joins sys.foreign_keys to sys.foreign_key_columns, sys.tables, and sys.columns to produce the canonical foreign-key map of the …

A heap table — a table with no clustered index — stores rows in no particular order, forces full table scans for most non-indexed queries, and accumulates forwarded records every time an UPDATE causes a row to outgrow its page. This script queries sys.tables, sys.indexes, sys.partitions, sys.allocation_units, and …

Tables without primary keys are heap structures with no guaranteed row ordering and no unique row identifier. They cause full table scans in queries that could use seeks, slow down DELETE and UPDATE operations, and are incompatible with SQL Server replication and Change Data Capture. This script finds every user table …

SQL Server Primary Key Discovery Script Using sp_pkeys and sysobjects Purpose This SQL Server script generates dynamic SQL statements that can be executed to discover primary keys across all user tables in a database. It's a powerful administrative tool that helps database administrators quickly identify primary key …