Synonyms in SQL Server 2005

http://nayyeri.net/archive/2007/08/27/synonyms-in-sql-server-2005.aspx

Naming conventions are always a big concern for developers whether they're an application developer or database developers! Naming tables, columns, views, stored procedures and other objects in a database sometimes gets harder than what we think, especially when we're working on multiple objects with same name from two different databases, tables or ...

SQL Server 2005 introduced a new feature for synonyms that come handy to assign alternative names for a database object in order to work with it easier. CREATE SYNONYM is a new statement that lets you assign these alternative names.

You can define a synonym on a two-part, three-part or four-part object name. The scope of synonyms is limited to the database where they're defined in! Synonyms can be defined for some objects like:

Table
View
Stored Procedure
Function
Replication filter procedure
Extended stored procedure

Let me give an example. Suppose that I have a database named MyDB with a table named MyTable. This table contains three columns: ID, Name and Age. I create some sample data in this table.

Now I can assign an alternative name to MyTable like AltMyTable as you see.

CREATE SYNONYM dbo.AltMyTable FOR MyTable
SELECT * FROM AltMyTable

This simply returns data from MyTable.

Synonyms in SQL Server 2005

As another example, I also create a simple stored procedure to select data from MyTable and name it SelectData.

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sysobjects WHERE type = 'P' AND name = 'SelectData')
BEGIN
DROP Procedure Stored_Procedure_Name
END
GO
CREATE Procedure SelectData
AS
SELECT * FROM MyTable
GO

Now I assign a new name like SelectMyData to this stored procedure.

CREATE SYNONYM dbo.SelectMyData FOR SelectData
EXECUTE SelectMyData

Synonyms in SQL Server 2005

You can also check your synonyms from the explorer easily.

Synonyms in SQL Server 2005