Catalog stored procedures provide a uniform catalog interface for accessing database gateways as well as SQL Server from the same application. These stored procedures are compatible with the catalog interface for the Microsoft Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) API.
These are the SQL Server catalog stored procedures:
| sp_column_privileges | sp_special_columns |
| sp_columns | sp_sproc_columns |
| sp_databases | sp_statistics |
| sp_datatype_info | sp_stored_procedures |
| sp_fkeys | sp_table_privileges |
| sp_pkeys | sp_tables |
| sp_server_info |
Some of these stored procedures support wildcard pattern matching for some parameters. Wildcard pattern matching allows you to substitute the % and _ characters for one or more characters in the parameter, just as in a LIKE expression in Transact-SQL. For example, to find all tables in the current database starting with the letter s, type:
sp_tables 's%'
For details about catalog stored procedures, see the description of the specific catalog stored procedure in the following sections or see the Microsoft ODBC Programmer's Reference and SDK Guide, available separately.