Search every column in every table in Sybase Database

Question

I'm been taxed with the task of creating an application that pulls data from our Micros Point of Sales system. The POS is using a Sybase database running on one of our servers. The database schema is very convoluted. I've been able to figure out most of the schema to gain access to the data I need, however, there are a few things still left to find. I know what they are called in the actual POS, but I can't seem to find them anywhere in the database (although I haven't actually looked through all 200+ tables).

I'm wondering if there's any way to run a query to search for a specific string in all the columns in all the tables. BTW, I'm using the "Interactive SQL" application that comes with the Sybase Database Client software to connect to the database.

Answer 1

You can do a query like this:

Select o.name as table, c.name as column from syscolumns c, sysobjects o
Where c.id = o.id and
c.name like "stringImLookingFor"

The first name is the table name and the second name is the column name. You can use '%' as a wild card if you don't know the exact name you are looking for.

Answer 2

If it's practical to dump the database to disk as text, you can just use ordinary text utilities to search the dump. grep is your friend.