In SQL Server, you might’ve encountered the OBJECTPROPERTY() function, only to find out that there’s also a OBJECTPROPERTYEX() function that appears to do exactly the same thing.

What’s going on here? Why the need for two functions that do the same thing?

My understanding is that Microsoft chose to add OBJECTPROPERTYEX() to extend the functionality of OBJECTPROPERTY(), rather than to introduce changes to OBJECTPROPERTY() that would potentially break existing code on legacy systems.

So there are some differences between the two functions.

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In SQL Server, the OBJECTPROPERTY() function returns information about schema-scoped objects in the current database.

These schema-scoped objects are the ones you can see by querying the sys.objects system catalog view. It can’t be used for objects that are not schema-scoped.

You can use OBJECTPROPERTY() to check if an object is a table, view, stored procedure, etc. You can also use it to check if a table has a primary key, foreign key, foreign key reference, etc.

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Two of the metadata functions available in SQL Server include DB_NAME() and ORIGINAL_DB_NAME(). Both functions are similar in that they return the name of a database. But they are also different. You definitely don’t want to confuse the two, as they serve different purposes.

In a nutshell, each function works as follows:

• DB_NAME() returns the name of a specified database. If you don’t explicitly specify a database, it returns the current database.
• ORIGINAL_DB_NAME() returns the database name specified by the user in the database connection string.

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In SQL Server, you can use the ORIGINAL_DB_NAME() function to return the database name specified by the user in the database connection string.

This function is not to be confused with the DB_NAME() function, which returns either a specific database, or the current one.

When you first make a connection to SQL Server, you have the option of specifying the initial database. For example, when using a command line interface such as sqlcmd, you can use the -d parameter to specify the initial database. If you don’t use this parameter, your login’s default database will be the initial database.

Once you connect, you can switch to a different database, but your original database will always be the same. In other words, ORIGINAL_DB_NAME() will always return the same database throughout your session, even if you switch to a different database.

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Below is a (slightly) improved script that returns all properties from the SERVERPROPERTY() function in SQL Server.

This is similar to the quick script that I posted recently. The difference is that for some properties, the script below uses CASE statements to provide a short explanation of the configured value, rather than the raw value (which is often a “1” or “0”). The aforementioned quick script, on the other hand, simply outputs the raw data for all rows.

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In SQL Server, the SERVERPROPERTY() function returns information about the server instance.

You can use it to return information such as the edition of SQL Server being used, the server name, the machine name, and more. As of SQL Server 2017 and 2019, you can use it to return up to 44 properties.

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