How can I get column names from a table in SQL Server?

Question

I want to query the name of all columns of a table. I found how to do this in:

• Oracle
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL

But I also need to know:

Answer 1

--This is another variation used to document a large database for conversion (Edited to --remove static columns)

SELECT o.Name                   as Table_Name
     , c.Name                   as Field_Name
     , t.Name                   as Data_Type
     , t.length                 as Length_Size
     , t.prec                   as Precision_
FROM syscolumns c 
     INNER JOIN sysobjects o ON o.id = c.id
     LEFT JOIN  systypes t on t.xtype = c.xtype  
WHERE o.type = 'U' 
ORDER BY o.Name, c.Name

--In the left join, c.type is replaced by c.xtype to get varchar types

Answer 2

You can use the stored procedure sp_columns which would return information pertaining to all columns for a given table. More info can be found here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176077.aspx

You can also do it by a SQL query. Some thing like this should help:

SELECT * FROM sys.columns WHERE object_id = OBJECT_ID('dbo.yourTableName') 

Or a variation would be:

SELECT   o.Name, c.Name
FROM     sys.columns c 
         JOIN sys.objects o ON o.object_id = c.object_id 
WHERE    o.type = 'U' 
ORDER BY o.Name, c.Name

This gets all columns from all tables, ordered by table name and then on column name.