Presents your 
SQL SERVER E-NEWSLETTER for February 27, 2003

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GET DETAILED TABLE INFORMATION WITH SP_COLUMNS_ROWSET

The system procedure sp_columns_rowset is an undocumented procedure that
returns detailed information about a table and the table's columns. The
output of this procedure is very similar to the
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS system view's output.

The procedure has three input parameters:

1. @table_name--using the system data type, sysname
2. @table_schema--the table's schema owner (optional)
3. @column_name--the table's column name (optional)

The following is sample code that uses sp_columns_rowset and a query
against the INFORMATION_SCHEMA system view, COLUMNS.

USE NORTHWIND
GO
EXEC sp_columns_rowset @table_name = N'Orders', @table_schema = N'dbo'
EXEC sp_columns_rowset @table_name = N'Orders', @table_schema = N'dbo',
@column_name = N'Freight'
GO

SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_NAME = N'Orders'
GO

The following is a list of the output headers from sp_columns_rowset:

* TABLE_CATALOG
* TABLE_SCHEMA
* TABLE_NAME
* -COLUMN_NAME
* -COLUMN_GUID
* -COLUMN_PROPID
* ORDINAL_POSITION
* -COLUMN_HASDEFAULT
* COLUMN_DEFAULT
* -COLUMN_FLAGS
* IS_NULLABLE
* DATA_TYPE
* -TYPE_GUID
* CHARACTER_MAXIMUM_LENGTH
* CHARACTER_OCTET_LENGTH
* NUMERIC_PRECISION
* (NUMERIC_PRECISION_RADIX )
* NUMERIC_SCALE
* DATETIME_PRECISION
* CHARACTER_SET_CATALOG
* CHARACTER_SET_SCHEMA
* CHARACTER_SET_NAME
* COLLATION_CATALOG
* COLLATION_SCHEMA
* COLLATION_NAME
* DOMAIN_CATALOG
* DOMAIN_SCHEMA
* DOMAIN_NAME
* -DESCRIPTION
* -COLUMN_LCID
* -COLUMN_COMPFLAGS
* -COLUMN_SORTID
* -COLUMN_TDSCOLLATION
* -IS_COMPUTED

The output from sp_columns_rowset is detailed and informative for the
user. While the output from this procedure is very similar to the
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS output, it has many additional columns of information.

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