SQL Server Team-based Development - Red Gate Software

Chapter 9: Searching DDL and Build
Scripts
Often, a database developer needs to go beyond high-level object searches, to find
occurrences of a specific string, such as a parameter name, within the DDL of the
databases you manage. It's at these times that the absence of an effective search utility in
SSMS really hits home. Of course, there is a Find menu item (CTRL+F) but it won't work
in the Object Explorer pane of SSMS to find things in your database schema. You also
have an object search feature in SSMS 2008 within the Object Explorer Details window,
but that only searches the names of objects, not their definitions. It also doesn't search
all objects, not even columns. Obviously, you can find strings within the current query
window, but this is only a small fraction of what you actually need when you're
developing a database. You want to search for all your database objects, their names,
their definitions and their comments.
In this chapter, I'll show how to search within the object definitions in your build scripts
to find occurrences of a specific string, using:
• SQL Search – a free search tool provided by Red Gate
• custom scripts – based on the catalog and INFORMATION_SCHEMA views.
With these scripts to hand, and a few more, I'll move on to how to make use of SSMS
shortcut keys to enable you select the name of an object, particularly a table, and to
instantly see, at a keystroke, the build script in the results pane, complete with the
documentation and, in the case of a table, the referential constraints. I'll also show
how to get a list of all the places in the database where the object's name appears.
A dream? Read on …
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