3.2. DISPLAYING METADATA
The two primary ways to programmatically display metadata for a database are to use system stored procedures and the SQL-92 compliant INFORMATION_ SCHEMA. There are also Metadata Functions, and one may, if absolutely necessary, query directly on the system tables. The following ways to access metadata programmatically are discussed in this section.
System Stored Procedures— These procedures return information about database and database objects.
ANSI Information Schema Views— These views are based on system tables in each database.
Metadata Functions– Such functions return information about a database and database objects.
SELECT statements on the system tables (often not desirable)
Metadata may also be displayed from ...
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