sp_MSforeachtable

Is there such a thing as a task where you would not need a cursor?
Hidden in the depths of the Master database are a series of stored procedures
that can replace some cursors with these one-liners.

Traditionally if you wanted to run a DBCC CHECKTABLE on every table in a database
you’d have to write an elaborate cursor like below :



DECLARE @dataname varchar(255),
@dataname_header varchar(255)

DECLARE datanames_cursor CURSOR FOR SELECT name FROM master..sysdatabases
WHERE name not in (‘master’, ‘pubs’, ‘tempdb’, ‘model’)
OPEN datanames_cursor
FETCH NEXT FROM datanames_cursor INTO @dataname
IF (@@fetch_status = 0)
BEGIN
SELECT @dataname_header = "Database " + RTRIM(UPPER(@dataname))
PRINT @dataname_header
SELECT @dataname_header = RTRIM(UPPER(@dataname))
EXEC ("DBCC CHECKDB " + "(" + @dataname + ")")
END
CLOSE datanames_cursor
DEALLOCATE datanames_cursor

Beginning with version 6.5 of SQL Server, Microsoft provides a stored procedure called
sp_MSreachfortable. Using the question mark as a place holder for all table names, the procedure
will do the same as the above query in a single line.
You can replace the above cursor with this :


sp_MSforeachtable @command1="print ‘?’ dbcc checktable (‘?’)"

You can issue up to three commands to the stored procedure using @command1 through @command3.

Recommended Related Reference Material

Transact-SQL (William C. Amo)
Transact-SQL Programming (Kevin Kline, Lee Gould & Andrew Zanevsky)


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