System names of returned columns

All we need is an easy explanation of the problem, so here it is.

I’m looking for a way to obtain system names of columns returned by an arbitrary sql query using Sql Server 2019. Here are a few sample queries and desired results:

company: id, name
employee: id, name, companyId

select * from company

| tableName | columnName |
  company     id
  company     name

select id as whatever from company

| tableName | columnName |
  company     id

select e.id, e.name, c.name from employee e join company c on e.companyId = c.id

| tableName | columnName |
  employee    id
  employee    name
  company     name

I’m not in control of the input queries, they are provided by end users.

How to solve :

I know you bored from this bug, So we are here to help you! Take a deep breath and look at the explanation of your problem. We have many solutions to this problem, But we recommend you to use the first method because it is tested & true method that will 100% work for you.

Method 1

The sys.dm_exec_describe_first_result_set DMF returns column meta-data for the specified query, including additional information about the source column when @include_browse_information = 1 (the third parameter) is specified:

SELECT 
      source_schema AS tableSchema
    , source_table AS tableName
    , source_column AS columnName
FROM sys.dm_exec_describe_first_result_set(N'select * from company;',NULL,1);

Note: Use and implement method 1 because this method fully tested our system.
Thank you 🙂

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0

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