Last week we implemented a database for which the developer didn’t have the CREATE TRIGGER scripts.  Unfortunately this is quite a frequent occurance and happens when database code (and objects) are implemented directly into a database and an assumption is made that the code is safely stored in the database/ backup.  True that we could have generated a schema using the SSMS Generate Scripts feature but that would have returned the base table too as part of the output.  What we needed was a single script containing just the trigger definitions.

The sys.sql_modules (Transact-SQL) catalog view “returns a row for each object that is an SQL language-defined module” and provided us with a solution to our problem.  The code used to generate the CREATE TRIGGER scripts is shown below with the “TR” filter limiting the result set to just the triggers.

SET NOCOUNT ON

SELECT 'USE ' + QUOTENAME(DB_NAME(), '[') + '
GO';

SELECT
    '-- [' + s.[name] + '].[' + tb.[name] + ']: ' +
    tr.[name] + CHAR(13) +
    m.[definition] + 'GO' + CHAR(13)
    AS [TriggerBody]
FROM sys.triggers tr
    INNER JOIN sys.all_sql_modules m ON m.[object_id] = tr.[object_id]
    INNER JOIN sys.tables tb ON tb.[object_id] = tr.[parent_id]
    INNER JOIN sys.schemas s ON tb.[schema_id] = s.[schema_id]
ORDER BY s.[name], tb.[name]

Knowledge of this catalog view also helped us script other SQL object types such as stored procedures, views, functions, and more.  I am a great fan of writing code that generates code to automate tedious tasks.  Scripts to extract SQL code for other object types will be posted in future articles.