SQL SERVER – Script to Update a Specific Column in Entire Database

Last week, I have received a very interesting question and I find in email and I really liked the question as I had to play around with SQL Script for a while to come up with the answer he was looking for. Please read the question and I believe that all of us face this kind of situation.

“Pinal,

In our database we have recently introduced ModifiedDate column in all of the tables. Now onwards any update happens in the row, we are updating current date and time to that field.

Now here is the issue, when we added that field we did not update it with a default value because we were not sure when we will go live with the system so we let it be NULL. Now modification to the application went live yesterday and we are now updating this field.

Here is where I need your help. We need to update all the tables in our database where we have column created ModifiedDate and now want to update with current datetime. As our system is already live since yesterday there are several thousands of the rows which are already updated with real world value so we do not want to update those values. Essentially, in our entire database where ever there is a ModifiedDate column and if it is NULL we want to update that with current date time? 

Do you have a script for it?”

Honestly I did not have such a script. This is very specific required but I was able to come up with two different methods how he can use this method.

Method 1 : Using INFORMATION_SCHEMA

SELECT 'UPDATE ' + T.TABLE_SCHEMA + '.' + T.TABLE_NAME + ' SET ModifiedDate = GETDATE() WHERE ModifiedDate IS NULL;'
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES T
INNER JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS C
ON T.TABLE_NAME = C.TABLE_NAME
AND c.COLUMN_NAME ='ModifiedDate'
WHERE T.TABLE_TYPE = 'BASE TABLE'
ORDER BY T.TABLE_SCHEMA, T.TABLE_NAME;

Method 2: Using DMV

SELECT 'UPDATE ' + SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id) + '.' + t.name + ' SET ModifiedDate = GETDATE() WHERE ModifiedDate IS NULL;'
FROM sys.tables AS t
INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.OBJECT_ID = c.OBJECT_ID
WHERE c.name ='ModifiedDate'
ORDER BY SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id), t.name;

Above scripts will create an UPDATE script which will do the task which is asked.

We can pretty much the update script to any other SELECT statement and retrieve any other data as well.

Reference: Pinal Dave (https://blog.sqlauthority.com)