How to exclude a column from SELECT query?

Question

I have 100 columns in a table and I want to list 99 columns except a particular one.

How to exclude that columns name?

Answer 1

You cannot.

Theoretically, you might involve dynamic sql here - some procedure will loop through all columns of your table (like, all_tabs_columns dictionary view in Oracle lists all columns of all tables), and form up you a query of select c1, c2 c3 ... c99 from tab, but I strongly discourage you of doing this. Will save you several lines of code, but make it hard to maintain. :)

Answer 2

The Tutorial D relational database query language does allow a projection to be expressed in terms of the attributes to be removed using ALL BUT however there is no such equivalent syntax in SQL that allows you to do this. You need to explicitly list the specific ones that you want.

You could use a View if you commonly need this same set of columns.

Answer 3

Try this.

DROP TABLE #MY_TEMP_TABLE

CREATE TABLE #MY_TEMP_TABLE
(
    Column_1        int             NULL,
    Column_2        varchar(10)     NULL,
    Column_3        datetime        NULL
)

INSERT INTO #MY_TEMP_TABLE(Column_1, Column_2, Column_3)
        SELECT  1, 'a', GETDATE()
UNION   SELECT  2, 'b', GETDATE()
UNION   SELECT  3, 'c', GETDATE()
UNION   SELECT  4, 'd', GETDATE()

DECLARE @dSQL nvarchar(1000)

SELECT  @dSQL = 'SELECT TOP 10 '

SELECT  @dSQL = @dSQL + LEFT(nst.ColumnList, LEN(nst.ColumnList)-1) --AS 'List'
FROM    (SELECT  so.id
        FROM    TEMPDB..SYSOBJECTS so
        WHERE   so.name LIKE '#MY_TEMP_TABLE%'
        AND     so.type = 'u') so
CROSS APPLY (SELECT sc.Name + ', '
            FROM    TEMPDB..SYSCOLUMNS sc
            WHERE   sc.id = so.id
            AND     sc.colid <> 3
            FOR XML PATH('')) nst
            (ColumnList)

SELECT  @dSQL = @dSQL + ' FROM #MY_TEMP_TABLE'

EXEC sp_executesql @dSQL

Answer 4

SELECT column_1, column_2, column_3, 
     /* ...the list of columns 4-97, not shown in this example... */,
     column_98, column_99
   FROM table

There is no easier way to do this (possibly by design): you need to specifically list each of the columns you want to retrieve.

Although it's a hassle to write, this is actually a Good Thing: using SELECT * in production code is discouraged (both for performance and maintainability reasons) - see e.g. this question.

Answer 5

Much faster query solution! In bold text, add your table name and column name to be remove. You can add as many fields as you want to remove.

DECLARE @query nvarchar(max)=(SELECT string_agg(COLUMN_NAME,',') FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME='YOURTABLENAME'

AND COLUMN_NAME NOT IN ('REMOVEDCOLOUMN',.........))

SET @query ='select '+@query+' FROM YOURTABLENAME' EXEC sp_executesql @query;