How to determine which columns are shared between two tables?

Question

Very new to SQL Sever here... I understand the concept of joining tables, etc. but what is the easiest way to determine which columns are shared?

Say for instance we ha

Answer 1

select COLUMN_NAME from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_NAME = 'Table1'

intersect

select COLUMN_NAME from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS where TABLE_NAME = 'Table2'

Answer 2

You can find data like this in the INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables. Technically those are more standardized than the sys views. (See this question.)

Here's a query you could use:

select A.COLUMN_NAME
from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS A
join INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS B
  on A.COLUMN_NAME = B.COLUMN_NAME
where A.TABLE_NAME = 'table1'
  and B.TABLE_NAME = 'table2'

If you need to specify the schema to avoid name collisions, add A.TABLE_SCHEMA = 'dbo' etc to the where clause.