automatically create views for a bunch of tables

Question

I'm looking for a way to automatically create a 1:1 view per table for a bunch of tables. Since there are plenty of tables for which I need a view, it would be time-consuming to create them manually.

Perfect scenario would be a query creating the create view queries for each table given at once.

Answer 1

This should do the trick for the current database. It's still dynamic SQL, but... Note that it does not check to see if the views already exist. You can add a WHERE clause to the cursor query to limit the tables - WHERE t.name = '...' or WHERE t.name IN ('...','....').

DECLARE @SchemaName sysname
DECLARE @SchemaQualifiedTableName sysname
DECLARE @TableName sysname
DECLARE @ColumnCount INT
DECLARE @ColumnID INT
DECLARE @SelectColumn NVARCHAR(500)
DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(max) = ''

DECLARE QUERYINFO CURSOR FOR
    SELECT
        SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id) AS SchemaName,
        '[' + SCHEMA_NAME(t.schema_id) + '].[' + t.name + ']' AS SchemaQualifiedTableName,
        t.name AS TableName,
        ccount.ColumnCount,
        c.column_id AS ColumnID,
        CASE WHEN c.column_id <> ccount.ColumnCount
                THEN c.name + ', '
             ELSE c.name
             END AS SelectColumn
    FROM sys.tables t
    INNER JOIN sys.columns c ON t.object_id=c.object_id
    INNER JOIN (
        SELECT object_id,COUNT(*) AS ColumnCount
        FROM sys.columns
        GROUP BY object_id
    ) ccount ON t.object_id = ccount.object_id
    ORDER BY t.Name,c.column_id

OPEN QUERYINFO
FETCH NEXT FROM QUERYINFO INTO @SchemaName,@SchemaQualifiedTableName,@TableName,@ColumnCount,@ColumnID,@SelectColumn
WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
BEGIN
    IF @ColumnID = 1
    BEGIN
        SET @sql = 'CREATE VIEW [' + @SchemaName + '].v_' + @TableName + ' AS SELECT ' + @SelectColumn
    END
    ELSE
    BEGIN
        SET @sql = @sql + @SelectColumn
    END  
  
    IF @ColumnID = @ColumnCount
    BEGIN
        SET @sql = @sql + ' FROM ' + @SchemaQualifiedTableName
        EXEC sys.sp_executesql @sql
        SET @sql = ''
    END 
    
    FETCH NEXT FROM QUERYINFO INTO @SchemaName,@SchemaQualifiedTableName,@TableName,@ColumnCount,@ColumnID,@SelectColumn
END

CLOSE QUERYINFO
DEALLOCATE QUERYINFO