SQL SERVER – Retrieve Maximum Length of Object Name with sp_server_info

The stored procedure sp_server_info can tell you the maximum length of an object name. A very common question which I often receive is –

“How big my table name can be?”

The answer is simple 128. You can figure this out by executing stored procedure sp_server_info on SQL Server.

Execute following stored procedure in SQL Server.

EXEC sp_server_info

It will return following resultset.

attribute_id attribute_name attribute_value
1 DBMS_NAME Microsoft SQL Server
2 DBMS_VER Microsoft SQL Server 2012 - 11.0.3000.0
10 OWNER_TERM owner
11 TABLE_TERM table
12 MAX_OWNER_NAME_LENGTH 128
13 TABLE_LENGTH 128
14 MAX_QUAL_LENGTH 128
15 COLUMN_LENGTH 128
16 IDENTIFIER_CASE MIXED
17 TX_ISOLATION 2
18 COLLATION_SEQ charset=iso_1 sort_order=nocase_iso charset_num=1 sort_order_num=52
19 SAVEPOINT_SUPPORT Y
20 MULTI_RESULT_SETS Y
22 ACCESSIBLE_TABLES Y
100 USERID_LENGTH 128
101 QUALIFIER_TERM database
102 NAMED_TRANSACTIONS Y
103 SPROC_AS_LANGUAGE Y
104 ACCESSIBLE_SPROC Y
105 MAX_INDEX_COLS 16
106 RENAME_TABLE Y
107 RENAME_COLUMN Y
108 DROP_COLUMN Y
109 INCREASE_COLUMN_LENGTH Y
110 DDL_IN_TRANSACTION Y
111 DESCENDING_INDEXES Y
112 SP_RENAME Y
113 REMOTE_SPROC Y
500 SYS_SPROC_VERSION 11.00.3000

In the result set you can notice there is a row with information TABLE_LENGTH and the value is 128. There are few other information related to server is also listed in the result set.

Though, a regular tablename can be 128 character long, a temporary table cannot be longer than 116 character. You can read the detailed blog post over here Maximum Allowable Length of Characters for Temp Objects is 116 – Guest Post by Balmukund Lakhani.

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.