Having just returned from a conference, I needed to play catch up on a few things in a stored procedure that I was working on before I left. Being a little frazzled still, I could not for the life of me remember the name of the stored procedure. Generally, I often find myself manually writing queries like this to find all references to a column, table, variable, or concept:

SELECT [name] 
  FROM sys.procedures 
  WHERE OBJECT_DEFINITION(OBJECT_ID) LIKE N'%string%';

…or…

SELECT OBJECT_NAME([object_id])
  FROM sys.sql_modules 
  WHERE [definition] LIKE N'%string%';

Yes, I could rely on dependencies sometimes – but even when they are not broken, I am not always trying to find things that show up in a dependency chain in the first place.

Now the queries above are a little tedious to write, but not too bad. But there are other complications that can often add a little bit of effort:

• When dealing with multiple owners/schema this can be more complex, so I would always add:

  SELECT OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]) 
      + '.' + [name] ...

• And in the case of poorly chosen identifiers (hey, this isn't always against my own systems!), I would add QUOTENAME:

  SELECT QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]) 
      + '.' + QUOTENAME([name]) ...

• And of course I would want the results to allow me to quickly get at the definition for those stored procedures, so I would want sys.sp_helptext as part of the results:

  SELECT 'EXEC sys.sp_helptext N''' 
      + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]) 
      + '.' + QUOTENAME([name]) + '''' ...

This all gets very tedious to type, so a while back I decided to implement a set of stock, utility procedures in all of my databases (and don't tell my clients, but I've added it to some of their systems, too). I wanted one for procedures specifically, and then one that will search sys.sql_modules so that it picks up functions and triggers as well.

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.Find_InSP
  @string nvarchar(max)
AS
BEGIN
  SET NOCOUNT ON;
 
  SELECT cmd = N'EXEC sys.sp_helptext ''' 
             + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]))
             + '.' + QUOTENAME([name]) + ''';'
  FROM sys.procedures
  WHERE OBJECT_DEFINITION([object_id]) LIKE N'%' + @string + '%'
  ORDER BY cmd;
END
GO
 
CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.Find_InModule
  @string nvarchar(max)
AS
BEGIN
   SET NOCOUNT ON;
 
   SELECT cmd = N'EXEC sys.sp_helptext ''' 
              + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_SCHEMA_NAME([object_id]))
              + '.' + QUOTENAME(OBJECT_NAME([object_id])) + ''';'
   FROM sys.sql_modules
   WHERE [definition] LIKE N'%' + @string + '%'
   ORDER BY cmd;
END
GO

Now when I run:

EXEC msdb.dbo.Find_InSP @string = N'agent';

I get the following results (and as an added bonus, I can use CTRL in the grid results to copy the sp_helptext commands only for the procedures I am interested in):

I have also added the procedures to the model database, so that they exist in all future databases that are created as well. Does this save me a ton of time on any given day? Of course not. But every shortcut helps, right? I hope these procedures are useful for you.