Finding Text in SQL Server Stored Procedures

So, I’m sure you have been met with a similar scenario during development. You know the one that you have to rename a column or even drop a column in the database. This can be quite annoying if you are doing stored procedure based data access for your application. Once you change the column on the table, you have to figure out which stored procedures reference the column. They aren’t always tough to find most of the time, but sometimes you are dealing with a column that may be referenced in many stored procedures. Well thanks to my boss Cliff’s research and knowledge sharing, your search can be as easy as ours!

The query:

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USE Northwind
GO 
DECLARE @SearchText AS VARCHAR(50)
SET @SearchText = 'CustomerID'

SELECT
ROUTINE_NAME,
ROUTINE_DEFINITION
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES
WHERE ROUTINE_NAME LIKE '%' + @SearchText + '%'
OR ROUTINE_DEFINITION LIKE '%' + @SearchText + '%'

This query will return all the names and routine definitions of stored procedures that contain certain text. It is not really bound by column names but I needed a true development scenario. Run the query with what you are looking for and presto! All the stored procedures you will need to modify.

Hope this helps!