Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 5: Creating and Altering Tables
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The EXEC command is used in two different ways. This rendition is used to execute a stored procedure
— in this case, a system stored procedure. We’ll see the second version later when we are dealing
with advanced query topics and stored procedures.
Technically speaking, you can execute a stored procedure by simply calling it (without
using the EXEC keyword). The problem is that this works only if the sproc being
called is the first statement of any kind in the batch. Just having sp_help Customers
would have worked in the place of the previous code, but if you tried to run a SELECT
statement before it — it would blow up on you. Not using EXEC leads to very unpredictable
behavior and should be avoided.
Try executing the command, and you’ll find that you get back several result sets one after another. The
information retrieved includes separate result sets for:
❑ Table name, schema, type of table (system vs. user), and creation date
❑ Column names, data types, nullability, size, and collation
❑ The identity column (if one exists) including the initial seed and increment values
❑ The ROWGUIDCOL (if one exists)
❑ Filegroup information
❑ Index names (if any exist), types, and included columns
❑ Constraint names (if any), types, and included columns
❑ Foreign key (if any) names and columns
❑ The names of any schema-bound views (more on this in Chapter 10) that depend on the table
Now that we’re certain that our table was created, let’s take a look at creating yet another table — the
Employees table. This time, let’s talk about what we want in the table first, and then see how you do
trying to code the CREATE script for yourself.
The Employees table is another fairly simple table. It should include information on:
❑ The employee’s ID — this should be automatically generated by the system
❑ First name
❑ Optionally, middle initial
❑ Last name
❑ Title
❑ Social Security Number
❑ Salary
❑ The previous salary
❑ The amount of the last raise