Find broken objects in SQL Server

Question

Is there a tool that will find all objects in SQL Server (functions, procs, views) that cannot possibly work because they refer to objects that don\'t exist?

Answer 1

You may be interested in checking out the following articles:

• Michael J. Swart: Find Missing SQL Dependencies
• eggheadcafe.com: Find broken stuff

You can test Michael J. Swart's solution as follows:

CREATE PROCEDURE proc_bad AS
    SELECT col FROM nonexisting_table
GO

SELECT
    OBJECT_NAME(referencing_id) AS [this sproc or VIEW...],
    referenced_entity_name AS [... depends ON this missing entity name]
FROM 
    sys.sql_expression_dependencies
WHERE 
    is_ambiguous = 0
    AND OBJECT_ID(referenced_entity_name) IS NULL
ORDER BY 
    OBJECT_NAME(referencing_id), referenced_entity_name;

Which returns:

+------------------------+------------------------------------------+
| this sproc or VIEW...  |  ... depends ON this missing entity name |
|------------------------+------------------------------------------|
| proc_bad               |  nonexisting_table                       |
+------------------------+------------------------------------------+