Additional object dependency information

adam_hafner

When retrieving information on objects could you also include the fields that an object is using.  For example, if a view uses the TableA, and it uses fields ID, Name and Attribute from TableA, could dependency tracker provide that additional information so you could see the applicable fields.  This would include fields that are returned from the table in the view but also if there are any fields used in WHERE, GROUP BY, JOIN, etc they would be listed as well.  The same would go for other database objects.

Jon_Kirkwood

Hi @adam_hafner

Thank you for reaching out on the Redgate forums.

Regarding your inquiry, are you able to share information on your use case; I would like to share this information back to our developers.

 

I believe the process currently is to read CREATE statements of objects in your database to see if they reference the name of existing objects to determine a dependency. 

If you are referencing a table, it doesn't report the objects from within the database, as they may not be unique names in the script. E.G. it may be possible to have an ambiguous record from two tables with the same name in a single script. 

Without a full naming convention, it may lead to erroneous reports of an objects' dependency.

 

Keen to obtain more information on how you would utilize this functionality, so this may be submitted as a feature request.

adam_hafner

@Jon_Kirkwood We would use this information when trying to determine the impact of deprecating a field in table, view, stored procedure, etc or implementing breaking changes to a field.  Using the previous example, if I was going to remove the Attribute field from Table A, currently all I know is what objects depend on Table A, but I have to do further analysis to see if any of the dependent objects actually use the Attribute field in order to remove it.  Same thing goes if I were to change the field definition for the Attribute field.  This takes dependency tracking a step deeper to get a better picture into what exact fields do things depend on within an object.  Let me know if you have other questions.

Thanks!

--Adam