Find the real column name of an alias used in a view?

Solution 1:

Given this view:

CREATE VIEW viewTest
AS
SELECT
    books.id,
    books.author,
    Books.title AS Name
FROM
    Books

What I can see you can get the columns used and the tables used by doing this:

SELECT * 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEW_COLUMN_USAGE AS UsedColumns 
WHERE UsedColumns.VIEW_NAME='viewTest'

SELECT * 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEW_TABLE_USAGE AS UsedTables 
WHERE UsedTables.VIEW_NAME='viewTest'

This is for sql server 2005+. See reference here

Edit

Give the same view. Try this query:

SELECT
    c.name AS columnName,
    columnTypes.name as dataType,
    aliases.name as alias
FROM 
sys.views v 
JOIN sys.sql_dependencies d 
    ON d.object_id = v.object_id
JOIN .sys.objects t 
    ON t.object_id = d.referenced_major_id
JOIN sys.columns c 
    ON c.object_id = d.referenced_major_id 
JOIN sys.types AS columnTypes 
    ON c.user_type_id=columnTypes.user_type_id
    AND c.column_id = d.referenced_minor_id
JOIN sys.columns AS aliases
    on c.column_id=aliases.column_id
    AND aliases.object_id = object_id('viewTest')
WHERE
    v.name = 'viewTest';

It returns this for me:

columnName  dataType  alias

id          int       id
author      varchar   author
title       varchar   Name

This is also tested in sql 2005+

Solution 2:

I think you can't.

Select query hides actual data source it was performed against. Because you can query anything, i.e. view, table, even linked remote server.