Useful system stored procedures in SQL Server

Question

I recently discovered that I could use the sp_help to get a table definition and have been hooked onto it since then. Before my discovery, I had to open up the Object explorer in SQL Management studio, manually search for the table name, right click on the table and select Design. That was a lot of effort!

What other system stored procedures do you all use that you can't simply live without?

Answer 1

Alt + F1 is a good shortcut key for sp_help.

sp_helptext is another goodie for getting stored procedure text.

Answer 2

All of these undocumented ones

xp_getnetname   xp_fileexist   xp_dirtree   xp_subdirs   sp_who2  xp_getfiledetails   xp_fixeddrives   Sp_tempdbspace   xp_enumdsn   xp_enumerrorlogs  sp_MSforeachtable   sp_MSforeachDB  

See here: Undocumented stored procedures

And now since SQl Server 2005 all the Dynamic Management Views like sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats

Answer 3

sp_ helpindex [table] - shows you index info (same info as sp_help)

sp_helpconstraint [table] - shows you primary/foreign key/defaults and other constraints *

sp_depends [obj] - shows dependencies of an object, for example:

sp_depends [table] - shows you what stored procs, views, triggers, UDF affect this table

sp_depends [sproc] - shows what tables etc are affected/used by this stored proc

Answer 4

You can use sp_spaceused to determine the size of a table or the entire database. If you pass the table name, it returns the space used for that table, when called with no argument it gives the space of the database.