Determine table names and column names at runtime?

Hi

I was wondering if anyone has an idea of how we could find the table names and column names of the tables in our Sql server database at runtime/dynamically given our connection string? Please let me know.

Thanks.The only advice I can give is this: All your database's objects are stored in the sysobjects table. And then there's syscolumns and sysindexes (shouldn't that be sysindices?).

I would be suprised if there were not free libraries out there that make it easy to get information about sql objects. I don't know of one particularly. Anyone know of one? If not, that might make a cool community project.|||There is a stored procedure sp_tables that returns a list of tables.

There is a stored procedure sp_columns that returns a list of Columns.

These are better to use than the system tables, as they are documented and should not change in a way to break your code. Look them up in Books Online...|||Gravy!

Glad you're here.|||> There is a stored procedure sp_tables that returns a list of tables.

ah, forgot about that. I guess because I usually only use it to do an

IF EXISTS (SELECT name FROM sysobjects WHERE name = 'whatever')

and an SP is no good there.... cheers for reminding me.|||In that case, you could/should use:

IF EXISTS (SELECT table_name FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.tables WHERE table_name = 'whatever')

Terri