Find Primary Key of a SQL Server Table

Here’s a quick way to find the primary key of a SQL Server 2005/2008 Table using TABLE_CONSTRAINTS

USE Northwind
go
SELECT ISKC.TABLE_SCHEMA, ISKC.TABLE_NAME, ISKC.COLUMN_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLE_CONSTRAINTS AS ISTC
INNER JOIN
INFORMATION_SCHEMA.KEY_COLUMN_USAGE AS ISKC
ON ISTC.CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY' AND
ISTC.CONSTRAINT_NAME = ISKC.CONSTRAINT_NAME
WHERE ISKC.TABLE_NAME = 'Employees'
ORDER BY ISKC.TABLE_NAME, ISKC.ORDINAL_POSITION

Another way that I know of is to make a join between sys.indexes, sys.index_columns and sys.columns and get the desired results.

About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, MCSE, is the founder of DotNetCurry, DNC Magazine for Developers, SQLServerCurry and DevCurry. He has also authored a couple of books 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls and a new one recently at The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Suprotim has received the prestigous Microsoft MVP award for nine times in a row now. In a professional capacity, he is the CEO of A2Z Knowledge Visuals Pvt Ltd, a digital group that represents premium web sites and digital publications comprising of Professional web, windows, mobile and cloud developers, technical managers, and architects.

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