SQL Server: Search all tables for a particular GUID

Question

i came across the need to cleanse some data, and i need to find some particular guids (i.e. uniqueidentifiers) in SQL Server°.

i\'ve come up with a stor

Answer 1

You can wrap all into a single SELECT and search all tables at once:

ALTER PROCEDURE dbo.FindGUID @searchValue uniqueidentifier AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(MAX);
WITH cte_all_tables(SQL) AS (
    SELECT N'SELECT ''' + QUOTENAME(t.TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' +QUOTENAME(t.TABLE_NAME) + 
        + N''' FROM ' + QUOTENAME(t.TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' +QUOTENAME(t.TABLE_NAME)
        + N' WHERE ' +
        (
            SELECT QUOTENAME(c.COLUMN_NAME) + N'= @searchValue OR '
            FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Columns c
            WHERE c.TABLE_NAME = t.TABLE_NAME
                AND c.TABLE_SCHEMA = t.TABLE_SCHEMA
                AND c.DATA_TYPE = 'uniqueidentifier'
            FOR XML PATH('')
        ) + N' 0=1 ' 
   FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Columns c
        INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Tables t
        ON c.TABLE_NAME = t.TABLE_NAME
        AND t.TABLE_SCHEMA = c.TABLE_SCHEMA
        AND t.TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
    WHERE DATA_TYPE = 'uniqueidentifier')
SELECT @sql = (SELECT [SQL] + N' UNION ALL ' FROM cte_all_tables
FOR XML PATH('')) + N' SELECT NULL WHERE 0=1';
PRINT @SQL;
exec sp_executesql @sql, N'@searchValue uniqueidentifier', @searchValue;
END

I used tombstone terminators like 'OR 0=1' and even an entire UNION, but that is just because I'm too lazy to trim the ending from the built concatenated strings.