Is there a way to have SQL server validate object references in Stored Procs?

Question

The following code executes fine in SQL Server

create proc IamBrokenAndDontKnowIt as
select * from tablewhichdoesnotexist

Of course if I tr

Answer 1

You can use

SET FMTONLY ON
EXEC dbo.My_Proc
SET FMTONLY OFF

You'll need to capture the error(s) somehow, but it shouldn't take much to put together a quick utility application that takes advantage of this for finding invalid stored procedures.

I haven't used this extensively, so I don't know if there are any side-effects to look out for.