Retrieving SQL Server Database Properties with DATABASEPROPERTYEX

By: Greg Robidoux   |   Updated: 2006-08-04   |   Comments (6)   |   Related: More > Database Administration

Problem
Finding out information about database settings is not that hard when you use Enterprise Manager or  Management Studio, T-SQL commands such as sp_helpdb or query the system tables directly.  But the way the information is returned may not always be the most useful. When using the GUI tools you can't easily grab just the information that you need and you can only look at one database at a time.  With the T-SQL commands such as sp_helpdb the database options are all strung together and not listed out individually.  And when querying the system tables, you often need to join multiple tables to get the results you need as well as convert the results to make sense of them.

Solution
SQL Server 2000 and 2005 have a built-in function called DATABASEPROPERTYEX that allows you to return the specific information you are looking for, for one or all databases. This function can be called from a SELECT statement to return the results of one or more databases.  So to find out the recovery model and status for all databases on my server I can run the following command and the get following results:

Next Activity

• Take a look at this built-in database function and how you can use it to document your servers or easily find out the settings across all of your databases
• Use this function to audit your servers to see what has changed

About the author

Greg Robidoux is the President and founder of Edgewood Solutions, a technology services company delivering services and solutions for Microsoft SQL Server. He is also one of the co-founders of MSSQLTips.com. Greg has been working with SQL Server since 1999, has authored numerous database-related articles, and delivered several presentations related to SQL Server. Before SQL Server, he worked on many data platforms such as DB2, Oracle, Sybase, and Informix.

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