How do I return the SQL data types from my query?

Question

I\'ve a SQL query that queries an enormous (as in, hundreds of views/tables with hard-to-read names like CMM-CPP-FAP-ADD) database that I don\'t need nor want to understand. Th

Answer 1

There MUST be en easier way to do this... Low and behold, there is...!

"sp_describe_first_result_set" is your friend!

Now I do realise the question was asked specifically for SQL Server 2000, but I was looking for a similar solution for later versions and discovered some native support in SQL to achieve this.

In SQL Server 2012 onwards cf. "sp_describe_first_result_set" - Link to BOL

I had already implemented a solution using a technique similar to @Trisped's above and ripped it out to implement the native SQL Server implementation.

In case you're not on SQL Server 2012 or Azure SQL Database yet, here's the stored proc I created for pre-2012 era databases:

CREATE PROCEDURE [fn].[GetQueryResultMetadata] 
    @queryText VARCHAR(MAX)
AS
BEGIN

    -- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
    -- interfering with SELECT statements.
    --SET NOCOUNT ON;

    PRINT @queryText;

    DECLARE
                @sqlToExec NVARCHAR(MAX) = 
                    'SELECT TOP 1 * INTO #QueryMetadata FROM ('
                    +
                    @queryText
                    +
                    ') T;'
                    + '
                        SELECT
                                    C.Name                          [ColumnName],
                                    TP.Name                         [ColumnType],
                                    C.max_length                    [MaxLength],
                                    C.[precision]                   [Precision],
                                    C.[scale]                       [Scale],
                                    C.[is_nullable]                 IsNullable
                        FROM
                                    tempdb.sys.columns              C
                                        INNER JOIN
                                    tempdb.sys.types                TP
                                                                                ON
                                                                                        TP.system_type_id = C.system_type_id
                                                                                            AND
                                                                                        -- exclude custom types
                                                                                        TP.system_type_id = TP.user_type_id
                        WHERE
                                    [object_id] = OBJECT_ID(N''tempdb..#QueryMetadata'');
            '

    EXEC sp_executesql @sqlToExec

END