Identifying Unused Objects In Microsoft SQL Server 2005

Question

It\'s a trivial task to find out if an object is referenced by something else or not. What I\'d like to do is identify whether or not it\'s actually being used

Answer 1

With SQL Server 2005, you can use the dynamic management view sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats. The name says "index" but that's a little misleading - every table has an entry in here, even if it doesn't have any indexes. Here's a useful query from SQL Magazine:

SELECT 
  t.name AS 'Table', 
  SUM(i.user_seeks + i.user_scans + i.user_lookups) 
    AS 'Total accesses',
  SUM(i.user_seeks) AS 'Seeks',
  SUM(i.user_scans) AS 'Scans',
  SUM(i.user_lookups) AS 'Lookups'
FROM 
  sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats i RIGHT OUTER JOIN 
    sys.tables t ON (t.object_id = i.object_id)
GROUP BY 
  i.object_id, 
  t.name
ORDER BY [Total accesses] DESC

Here's the original article:

http://www.sqlmag.com/Article/ArticleID/53878/sql_server_53878.html

Keep in mind that these usage statistics reset when SQL Server restarts.