How do I find a stored procedure containing <text>?

Solution 1:

SELECT ROUTINE_NAME, ROUTINE_DEFINITION
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES 
    WHERE ROUTINE_DEFINITION LIKE '%Foo%' 
    AND ROUTINE_TYPE='PROCEDURE'

SELECT OBJECT_NAME(id) 
    FROM SYSCOMMENTS 
    WHERE [text] LIKE '%Foo%' 
    AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, 'IsProcedure') = 1 
    GROUP BY OBJECT_NAME(id)

SELECT OBJECT_NAME(object_id)
    FROM sys.sql_modules
    WHERE OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id, 'IsProcedure') = 1
    AND definition LIKE '%Foo%'

Solution 2:

Grab yourself a copy of the free Red-Gate SQL Search tool and start enjoying searching in SQL Server! :-)

It's a great and very useful tool, and YES! it's totally, absolutely FREE for any kind of use.

Solution 3:

I took Kashif's answer and union'd all of them together. Strangely, sometimes, I found results in one of the selects but not the other. So to be safe, I run all 3 when I'm looking for something. Hope this helps:

DECLARE @SearchText varchar(1000) = 'mytext';

SELECT DISTINCT SPName 
FROM (
    (SELECT ROUTINE_NAME SPName
        FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES 
        WHERE ROUTINE_DEFINITION LIKE '%' + @SearchText + '%' 
        AND ROUTINE_TYPE='PROCEDURE')
    UNION ALL
    (SELECT OBJECT_NAME(id) SPName
        FROM SYSCOMMENTS 
        WHERE [text] LIKE '%' + @SearchText + '%' 
        AND OBJECTPROPERTY(id, 'IsProcedure') = 1 
        GROUP BY OBJECT_NAME(id))
    UNION ALL
    (SELECT OBJECT_NAME(object_id) SPName
        FROM sys.sql_modules
        WHERE OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id, 'IsProcedure') = 1
        AND definition LIKE '%' + @SearchText + '%')
) AS T
ORDER BY T.SPName

Solution 4:

You can also try ApexSQL Search - trial version SSMS plug-in from ApexSQL.

Solution 5:

In case you needed schema as well:

SELECT   DISTINCT SCHEMA_NAME(o.schema_id),o.name,[text]
FROM     syscomments AS c
         INNER JOIN sys.objects AS o ON c.id = o.[object_id]
         INNER JOIN sys.schemas AS s ON o.schema_id = s.schema_id
WHERE    text LIKE '%foo%'
ORDER BY  SCHEMA_NAME(o.schema_id),o.name