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Reverse Engineering a MS SQL 2000 Database???? HELP

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I am a newby to tech republic and also to the DBA world. I really need some help getting my crystal report going. I am trying to create a report using crystal report 8.5, I have successfully connected the database to the program but I do not know the structure of the database and so although I can pull data from any one table at a time, I cannot create queries across table. I have been researching and I realize there is reverse engineering but that’s not helping out either, as all the programs I have been using freeze up. The database has 1753 tables.

What can you recommend that I do in order to be able to get a schematic view of the database in order to write sensible queries.

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1753 tables, wow

In reply to Reverse Engineering a MS SQL 2000 Database???? HELP

SQl Enterprise does come with a diagramming tool, Like most it relies of the existance of foreign keys though and trying to layout that many tables is likely to make it collapse anyway.
If foreign keys aren’t implemented, you’ve got serious problems.
Is it a stored procedure design the logic might be in there. The code base or heaven forfend some documentation might give you some clues.

Anything thing else means you are on guess street and down to meaningful names.

You might want to run up the isql tool and have a nose about.
The sysobjects, systables, syscolumns tables in the database. for instance all the non ms tables are in systtables with a type of ‘U’. use the table id in there joined with syscolumns and you can query out all the tables with say an order-no column.

Something like that might give you start.

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