INFORMATION_SCHEMA vs sysobjects

Question

In SQL Server:

What is the difference between INFORMATION_SCHEMA and sysobjects? Does one provide more information than the other or are they used for different thin

Answer 1

The INFORMATION_SCHEMA is part of the SQL-92 standard, so it's not likely to change nearly as often as sysobjects.

The views provide an internal, system table-independent view of the SQL Server metadata. They work correctly even if significant changes have been made to the underlying system tables.

You are always much better off querying INFORMATION_SCHEMA, because it hides the implementation details of the objects in sysobjects.

Answer 2

INFORMATION_SCHEMA is an ANSI standard, somewhat extented in its SQL Server implementation. sysobjects is specific to SQL Server. Old versions of SQL Server did not support it.

So INFORMATION_SCHEMA is more portable (works on other database) and somewhat easier to use than sysobjects. If it has the information you need, I would go for INFORMATION_SCHEMA.

sys.objects sysobjects is only there for SQL 2000 portability.