SQL Server: Extract Table Meta-Data (description, fields and their data types)

To get the description data, you unfortunately have to use sysobjects/syscolumns to get the ids:

SELECT      u.name + '.' + t.name AS [table],
            td.value AS [table_desc],
            c.name AS [column],
            cd.value AS [column_desc]
FROM        sysobjects t
INNER JOIN  sysusers u
    ON      u.uid = t.uid
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.extended_properties td
    ON      td.major_id = t.id
    AND     td.minor_id = 0
    AND     td.name = 'MS_Description'
INNER JOIN  syscolumns c
    ON      c.id = t.id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.extended_properties cd
    ON      cd.major_id = c.id
    AND     cd.minor_id = c.colid
    AND     cd.name = 'MS_Description'
WHERE t.type = 'u'
ORDER BY    t.name, c.colorder

You can do it with info-schema, but you'd have to concatenate etc to call OBJECT_ID() - so what would be the point?

Generic information about tables and columns can be found in these tables:

select * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
select * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS

The table description is an extended property, you can query them from sys.extended_properties:

select 
    TableName = tbl.table_schema + '.' + tbl.table_name, 
    TableDescription = prop.value,
    ColumnName = col.column_name, 
    ColumnDataType = col.data_type
FROM information_schema.tables tbl
INNER JOIN information_schema.columns col 
    ON col.table_name = tbl.table_name
    AND col.table_schema = tbl.table_schema
LEFT JOIN sys.extended_properties prop 
    ON prop.major_id = object_id(tbl.table_schema + '.' + tbl.table_name) 
    AND prop.minor_id = 0
    AND prop.name = 'MS_Description' 
WHERE tbl.table_type = 'base table'

You could try sp_help <Name of object>

I liked @Andomar's answer best, but I needed the column descriptions also. Here is his query modified to include those also. (Uncomment the last part of the WHERE clause to return only rows where either description is non-null).

SELECT
    TableName = tbl.table_schema + '.' + tbl.table_name, 
    TableDescription = tableProp.value,
    ColumnName = col.column_name, 
    ColumnDataType = col.data_type,
    ColumnDescription = colDesc.ColumnDescription
FROM information_schema.tables tbl
INNER JOIN information_schema.columns col 
    ON col.table_name = tbl.table_name
LEFT JOIN sys.extended_properties tableProp 
    ON tableProp.major_id = object_id(tbl.table_schema + '.' + tbl.table_name) 
        AND tableProp.minor_id = 0
        AND tableProp.name = 'MS_Description' 
LEFT JOIN (
    SELECT sc.object_id, sc.column_id, sc.name, colProp.[value] AS ColumnDescription
    FROM sys.columns sc
    INNER JOIN sys.extended_properties colProp
        ON colProp.major_id = sc.object_id
            AND colProp.minor_id = sc.column_id
            AND colProp.name = 'MS_Description' 
) colDesc
    ON colDesc.object_id = object_id(tbl.table_schema + '.' + tbl.table_name)
        AND colDesc.name = col.COLUMN_NAME
WHERE tbl.table_type = 'base table'
--AND tableProp.[value] IS NOT NULL OR colDesc.ColumnDescription IS NOT null