Selecting from a view shows the wrong set of columns

Question

I'm selecting from a view in SQL Server. If I right-click on it and choose "Select Top n Rows", it runs and shows me 30 columns. If I open the view in ALTER mode (right-click, Script View As, etc...), highlight the code and run it, I get 50 columns. I should get 50 columns, because I just added 20 new columns to the table feeding the view, and inside the view I'm using a "SELECT * FROM..." statement.

I've refreshed the Views folder, but that didn't help.

Anyone know why the discrepancy, and how to correct it?

Answer 1

First, stop using SELECT * in your views. I talk about this quite a bit here:

• Bad habits to kick : using SELECT * / omitting the column list

Next, run sp_refreshview or sp_refreshsqlmodule against each view that references a table (or another view!) that you have changed, e.g.:

EXEC sp_refreshview N'dbo.viewname';

If you want to generate a script that refreshes all of the views in the system:

DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(MAX) = N'';

SELECT @sql += N'
  EXEC sp_refreshsqlmodule N''' 
  + QUOTENAME(s.name) + '.' + QUOTENAME(v.name) + ''';'
FROM sys.schemas AS s 
INNER JOIN sys.views AS v 
ON s.[schema_id] = v.[schema_id]; 

EXEC sp_executesql @sql;

(You may want to run it twice in case there are circular or out-of-order dependencies.)

But this is a temporary fix. You will have to repeat this every time you change any table that might have views that reference it, then go find out which views are involved. This is not the right way to approach schema design. AT ALL. I wrote about a DDL trigger that would help automate this for you, but this is really the wrong approach - just stop using SELECT * in your views!

• Keeping sysdepends up to date in SQL Server 2008

You may also want to consider adding WITH SCHEMABINDING to the definition of all of your views. This does two things:

1. Prevents you from using SELECT * in the view. This is A GOOD THING™.
2. Prevents you from changing underlying tables without knowing exactly which views would be affected by the change. This is also A GOOD THING™.

Answer 2

I highly recommend not using SELECT * in code embedded... well... pretty much anywhere. The fields of the view are being defined when the view is created. You need to recreate the view.

Also, look at the accepted answer to https://stackoverflow.com/questions/163246/sql-server-equivalent-to-oracles-create-or-replace-view which shows how to use ALTER VIEW rather than DROP VIEW and CREATE VIEW in order to do things like preserve permissions.

Answer 3

In SQL Server, views are not bound to the schema of the base tables by default. Try dropping and recreating the view.