Columns List of Views

One of myclient asked me nice question about getting columns list for views. Well, please take a look at following solution I came up with.

The first view just holds the data about view and their columns and as you can see it is not easy to read it at all.

CREATE VIEW v_getcolumns
AS
SELECT INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES.TABLE_NAME ,COLUMN_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES JOIN INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
ON INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES.TABLE_NAME=INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS.TABLE_NAME
WHERE TABLE_TYPE = 'VIEW' AND
OBJECTPROPERTY(
OBJECT_ID(
QUOTENAME(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES.TABLE_SCHEMA) + '.' +
QUOTENAME(INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES.TABLE_NAME)
), 'IsMSShipped') = 0


The final step I build a crosstab to contacanate the names of the columns per view based on count.I ened upi with 10 columns per view as maximum number, you can modify it for your needs.The cool thing is if you specify '*' in SELECT statement within a view and running the following query you get all columns of the table.

SELECT TABLE_NAME ,MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 1 then COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 2 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 3 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 4 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 5 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 6 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 7 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 8 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 9 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end)
+MAX(CASE WHEN rnk = 10 THEN ', ' + COLUMN_NAME ELSE '' end) AS columns
FROM
(
SELECT A.TABLE_NAME ,A.COLUMN_NAME,COUNT(*)rnk
FROM v_getcolumns A, v_getcolumns B
WHERE A.TABLE_NAME=B.TABLE_NAME AND
A.COLUMN_NAME>=B.COLUMN_NAME
GROUP BY a.TABLE_NAME ,a.COLUMN_NAME
) AS der
GROUP BY TABLE_NAME