Find the real column name of an alias used in a view?

Question

Suppose I have a view in which some of the column names are aliases, like "surName" in this example:

CREATE VIEW myView AS
    SELECT  
            firstName,
            middleName,
            you.lastName surName
    FROM 
            myTable me
            LEFT OUTER JOIN yourTable you
            ON me.code = you.code
GO

I'm able to retrieve some information about the view using the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views.
For example, the query

SELECT column_name AS ALIAS, data_type AS TYPE
FROM information_schema.columns 
WHERE table_name = 'myView'

yields:

 ----------------
|ALIAS     |TYPE |
 ----------------
|firstName |nchar|
|middleName|nchar|
|surName   |nchar|
 ----------------

However, I would like to know the actual column name as well. Ideally:

 ---------------------------
|ALIAS     |TYPE |REALNAME  |
 ---------------------------
|firstName |nchar|firstName |
|middleName|nchar|middleName|
|surName   |nchar|lastName  |
 ---------------------------

How can I determine what the real column name is based on the alias? There must be some way to use the sys tables and/or INFORMATION_SCHEMA views to retrieve this information.

---

EDIT: I can get close with this abomination, which is similar to Arion's answer:

SELECT
    c.name AS ALIAS,
    ISNULL(type_name(c.system_type_id), t.name) AS DATA_TYPE,
    tablecols.name AS REALNAME
FROM 
    sys.views v
    JOIN sys.columns c ON c.object_id = v.object_id
    LEFT JOIN sys.types t ON c.user_type_id = t.user_type_id
    JOIN sys.sql_dependencies d ON d.object_id = v.object_id 
        AND c.column_id = d.referenced_minor_id
    JOIN sys.columns tablecols ON d.referenced_major_id = tablecols.object_id 
        AND tablecols.column_id = d.referenced_minor_id 
        AND tablecols.column_id = c.column_id
WHERE v.name ='myView'

This yields:

 ---------------------------
|ALIAS     |TYPE |REALNAME  |
 ---------------------------
|firstName |nchar|firstName |
|middleName|nchar|middleName|
|surName   |nchar|code      |
|surName   |nchar|lastName  |
 ---------------------------

but the third record is wrong -- this happens with any view created using a "JOIN" clause, because there are two columns with the same "column_id", but in different tables.

Answer 1

Given this view:

CREATE VIEW viewTest
AS
SELECT
    books.id,
    books.author,
    Books.title AS Name
FROM
    Books

What I can see you can get the columns used and the tables used by doing this:

SELECT * 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEW_COLUMN_USAGE AS UsedColumns 
WHERE UsedColumns.VIEW_NAME='viewTest'

SELECT * 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEW_TABLE_USAGE AS UsedTables 
WHERE UsedTables.VIEW_NAME='viewTest'

This is for sql server 2005+. See reference here

Edit

Give the same view. Try this query:

SELECT
    c.name AS columnName,
    columnTypes.name as dataType,
    aliases.name as alias
FROM 
sys.views v 
JOIN sys.sql_dependencies d 
    ON d.object_id = v.object_id
JOIN .sys.objects t 
    ON t.object_id = d.referenced_major_id
JOIN sys.columns c 
    ON c.object_id = d.referenced_major_id 
JOIN sys.types AS columnTypes 
    ON c.user_type_id=columnTypes.user_type_id
    AND c.column_id = d.referenced_minor_id
JOIN sys.columns AS aliases
    on c.column_id=aliases.column_id
    AND aliases.object_id = object_id('viewTest')
WHERE
    v.name = 'viewTest';

It returns this for me:

columnName  dataType  alias

id          int       id
author      varchar   author
title       varchar   Name

This is also tested in sql 2005+

Answer 2

I think you can't.

Select query hides actual data source it was performed against. Because you can query anything, i.e. view, table, even linked remote server.