Find all those columns which have only null values, in a MySQL table

Question

The situation is as follows:

I have a substantial number of tables, with each a substantial number of columns. I need to deal with this old and to-be-deprecated data

Answer 1

SQL Fiddle Demo Link

I have created 4 tables. Three for demo and one nullcolumns is the compulsory part of solution. Among three tables, only salary and dept have columns with all values null (you may have a look at their script).

The compulsory table and the procedure are given at the end

You can copy paste and run (the compulsory part or all) as sql (just you have to change the delimiter to //) in your desired database on your localhost and then --- call get(); and see the results

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `dept` (
  `did` int(11) NOT NULL,
  `dname` varchar(50) DEFAULT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`did`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;


INSERT INTO `dept` (`did`, `dname`) VALUES
(1, NULL),
(2, NULL),
(3, NULL),
(4, NULL),
(5, NULL);

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `emp` (
  `id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `ename` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  `did` int(11) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY (`ename`),
  KEY `deptid` (`did`),
  KEY `id` (`id`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 AUTO_INCREMENT=6 ;


INSERT INTO `emp` (`id`, `ename`, `did`) VALUES
(1, 'e1', 4),
(2, 'e2', 4),
(3, 'e3', 2),
(4, 'e4', 4),
(5, 'e5', 3);


CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `salary` (
  `EmpCode` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  `Amount` int(11) DEFAULT NULL,
  `Date` int(11) DEFAULT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

INSERT INTO `salary` (`EmpCode`, `Amount`, `Date`) VALUES
('1', 344, NULL),
('2', NULL, NULL);

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `nullcolumns` (
  `Table_Name` varchar(100) NOT NULL,
  `Column_Name` varchar(100) NOT NULL
) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

--Only one procedure Now
CREATE PROCEDURE get(dn varchar(100))
BEGIN
declare c1 int; declare b1 int default 0; declare tn varchar(30);
declare c2 int; declare b2 int; declare cn varchar(30);

select count(*) into c1 from information_schema.tables where table_schema=dn;
delete from nullcolumns;
while b10 then set @res := 0;
set @query := concat("select ((select max(",cn,") from ", dn,".",tn,")
is NULL) into @res");
prepare s1 from @query;
execute s1;deallocate prepare s1;

if @res=1 then
insert into nullcolumns values(tn,cn);
end if; end if;

set b2=b2+1;
end while;

set b1=b1+1;
end while;
select * from nullcolumns;
END;

You can easily execute stored procedure easily as sql in your phpmyadin 'as it is' just change the Delimiters (at the bottom of SQL quesry box) to // Then

call get();

And Enjoy :)

You can see Now the table nullcolumns showing all columns having 100/100 null values along with the table Names

In procedure code if @nor>0 restricts that no empty table should be included in results you can remove that restriction.