Find all references to an object in an SQL Server database

Question

I\'m trying to find all references to an object in an SQL Server database.

How can I quickly search? SQL Server Management Studio does not seem to do it. I use http:

Answer 1

Use:

select object_name(m.object_id), m.*
  from sys.sql_modules m
 where m.definition like N'%name_of_object%'

...because SYSCOMMENTS and INFORMATION_SCHEMA.routines have nvarchar(4000) columns. So if "name_of_object" is used at position 3998, it won't be found. SYSCOMMENTS does have multiple lines, but INFORMATION_SCHEMA.routines truncates.

Answer 2

Very late to the party, but...

You can use the system proc sys.sp_depends:

exec sys.sp_depends 'object_name'

The result is a table listing all of the database objects that depend on (i.e., reference) object_name. Each row contains the name and type of the referring object, along with other info columns, depending on the type of object_name.

Note: This proc was added in MS SQL Server 2008.

See: MSDN docs

The docs say that this proc may be removed in a future release, and to use sys.dm_sql_referencing_entities instead, but it's still alive and kicking in MS SQL 2017.

Answer 3

In SQL Server 2000 here is a query that can search inside object definitions, supporting search strings of up to 2000 characters. It uses the chunks in the syscomments table.

SELECT O.name, O.xtype
FROM sysobjects O
WHERE EXISTS (
   SELECT *
   FROM
      (
         SELECT
            Chunk = Substring(C1.text, T.Offset, 4000)
                + Coalesce(Substring(C2.text, 1, T.AdditionalLength), '')
         FROM
            syscomments C1
            CROSS JOIN (
               SELECT 1, 0
               UNION ALL
               SELECT 2001, 2000
            ) T (Offset, AdditionalLength)
            LEFT JOIN syscomments C2
               ON C1.id = C2.id
               AND C1.colid + 1 = C2.colid
               AND T.Offset > 1
         WHERE
            O.id = C1.id
      ) C
   WHERE
      Chunk LIKE '%search string%'
);

Answer 4

I use this query to look for all tables (or text) in the stored procedures:

SELECT DISTINCT o.name, o.xtype
FROM syscomments c
INNER JOIN sysobjects o ON c.id=o.id
WHERE c.TEXT LIKE '%tablename%'