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copied!<p>Although the solutions presented before are valid and work, I humbly offer a code that's cleaner, more elegant, and with better performance, at least as I see it.</p> <p>Firstly, one may ask: Why would anyone ever need a code snippet to globally and blindly look for a string? Hey, they already invented fulltext, don't you know?</p> <p>My answer: my mainly work is at systems integration projects, and discovering where the data is written is important whenever I'm learning a new and undocummented database, which seldom happens.</p> <p>Also, the code I present is a stripped down version of a more powerful and dangerous script that searches and REPLACES text throughout the database.</p> <pre><code>CREATE TABLE #result( id INT IDENTITY, -- just for register seek order tblName VARCHAR(255), colName VARCHAR(255), qtRows INT ) go DECLARE @toLookFor VARCHAR(255) SET @toLookFor = '[input your search criteria here]' DECLARE cCursor CURSOR LOCAL FAST_FORWARD FOR SELECT '[' + usr.name + '].[' + tbl.name + ']' AS tblName, '[' + col.name + ']' AS colName, LOWER(typ.name) AS typName FROM sysobjects tbl INNER JOIN( syscolumns col INNER JOIN systypes typ ON typ.xtype = col.xtype ) ON col.id = tbl.id -- LEFT OUTER JOIN sysusers usr ON usr.uid = tbl.uid WHERE tbl.xtype = 'U' AND LOWER(typ.name) IN( 'char', 'nchar', 'varchar', 'nvarchar', 'text', 'ntext' ) ORDER BY tbl.name, col.colorder -- DECLARE @tblName VARCHAR(255) DECLARE @colName VARCHAR(255) DECLARE @typName VARCHAR(255) -- DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000) DECLARE @crlf CHAR(2) SET @crlf = CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) OPEN cCursor FETCH cCursor INTO @tblName, @colName, @typName WHILE @@fetch_status = 0 BEGIN IF @typName IN('text', 'ntext') BEGIN SET @sql = '' SET @sql = @sql + 'INSERT INTO #result(tblName, colName, qtRows)' + @crlf SET @sql = @sql + 'SELECT @tblName, @colName, COUNT(*)' + @crlf SET @sql = @sql + 'FROM ' + @tblName + @crlf SET @sql = @sql + 'WHERE PATINDEX(''%'' + @toLookFor + ''%'', ' + @colName + ') > 0' + @crlf END ELSE BEGIN SET @sql = '' SET @sql = @sql + 'INSERT INTO #result(tblName, colName, qtRows)' + @crlf SET @sql = @sql + 'SELECT @tblName, @colName, COUNT(*)' + @crlf SET @sql = @sql + 'FROM ' + @tblName + @crlf SET @sql = @sql + 'WHERE ' + @colName + ' LIKE ''%'' + @toLookFor + ''%''' + @crlf END EXECUTE sp_executesql @sql, N'@tblName varchar(255), @colName varchar(255), @toLookFor varchar(255)', @tblName, @colName, @toLookFor FETCH cCursor INTO @tblName, @colName, @typName END SELECT * FROM #result WHERE qtRows > 0 ORDER BY id GO DROP TABLE #result go </code></pre>

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