Useful system stored procedures in SQL Server

Question

I recently discovered that I could use the sp_help to get a table definition and have been hooked onto it since then. Before my discovery, I had to open up the Object explorer in SQL Management studio, manually search for the table name, right click on the table and select Design. That was a lot of effort!

What other system stored procedures do you all use that you can't simply live without?

Solution 1

Alt + F1 is a good shortcut key for sp_help.

sp_helptext is another goodie for getting stored procedure text.

Solution 2

All of these undocumented ones

xp_getnetname 

xp_fileexist 

xp_dirtree 

xp_subdirs 

sp_who2

xp_getfiledetails 

xp_fixeddrives 

Sp_tempdbspace 

xp_enumdsn 

xp_enumerrorlogs

sp_MSforeachtable 

sp_MSforeachDB 

See here: Undocumented stored procedures

And now since SQl Server 2005 all the Dynamic Management Views like sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

Solution 3

sp_ helpindex [table] - shows you index info (same info as sp_help)

sp_helpconstraint [table] - shows you primary/foreign key/defaults and other constraints *

sp_depends [obj] - shows dependencies of an object, for example:

sp_depends [table] - shows you what stored procs, views, triggers, UDF affect this table

sp_depends [sproc] - shows what tables etc are affected/used by this stored proc

Solution 4

You can use sp_spaceused to determine the size of a table or the entire database. If you pass the table name, it returns the space used for that table, when called with no argument it gives the space of the database.

Solution 5

• sp_who
• sp_who2

• sp_helptext

• list of useful system stored procedures

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