Creating a Dynamic Temporary Table

When I execute the following Stored Procedure with a parameter (EXEC MyProc
'MyTab'); it creates a table ##MyTempTable. What happened to the parameter
@.MyTempTable that was passed in the SQL statement?
I meant to create the temp table named MyTab as passed to the SP from the
statement.
CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[MyProc] (@.MyTempTable nvarchar(50)) AS
SELECT *
INTO ##MyTempTable
FROM Customers
GOThe right answer is never pass a table name as a parameter. You need
to understand the basic idea of a data model and what a table means in
implementing a data model. Go back to basics. What is a table? A
model of a set of entities or relationships. EACH TABLE SHOULD BE A
DIFFERENT KIND OF ENTITY. What having a generic procedure works
equally on automobiles, octopi or Britney Spear's discology is saying
that your application is a disaster of design.
1) This is dangerous because some user can insert pretty much whatever
they wish -- consider the string 'Foobar; DELETE FROM Foobar; SELECT *
FROM Floob' in your statement string.
2) It says that you have no idea what you are doing, so you are giving
control of the application to any user, present or future. Remember
the basics of Software Engineering? Modules need weak coupling and
strong cohesion, etc. This is far more fundamental than just SQL; it
has to do with learning to programming at all.
3) If you have tables with the same structure which represent the same
kind of entities, then your schema is not orthogonal. Look up what
Chris Date has to say about this design flaw. Look up the term
attribute splitting.
4) You might have failed to tell the difference between data and
meta-data. The SQL engine has routines for that stuff and applications
do not work at that level, if you want to have any data integrity.
Stop writing code like this. You are mimicking a 1950's scratch tape
file. But more than that, you never used the parameter anywhere in the
procedure -- nothing happened to it. Also, I see you used the
"Magical NVARCHAR(50)" data type. Do you really have names that long?
I doubt it. You will eventually get such a garbage name; I can give
you a Chinese Suttra if you want to do use it :)
Use the Customers table in your statements. Unfortunately, we have no
idea what you wanted to do, so nobody can help you further.|||Shariq,
I have a little confusion as to what you are attempting to achieve.
The short answer to what you asking is as follows:
CREATE STORED PROCEDURE [dbo].[usp_My_SProc]
@.MyTempTable nvarchar(50)=''
AS
If @.MyTempTable<>''
BEGIN
DECLARE @.sSTR varchar(2000)
SET @.sSTR = ' '
SET @.sSTR = @.sSTR + ' SELECT * INTO '
SET @.sSTR = @.sSTR + '#' + @.MyTempTable
SET @.sSTR = @.sSTR + ' FROM Customers '
EXEC (@.sSTR)
END
This will achieve the result your question poses, but does not a lot to
possibly achieve your intended goal.
The one drawback to the above code is that the EXEC(@.sSTR) command runs in
an independant thread from the Stored Procedure and such a table cannot be
accessed from another thread, unless you use the ## prefix, but this, again,
brings up it's own dilemmas as the same Stored Procedure acn only be run onc
e
at a time.
"Shariq" wrote:

> When I execute the following Stored Procedure with a parameter (EXEC MyPro
c
> 'MyTab'); it creates a table ##MyTempTable. What happened to the parameter
> @.MyTempTable that was passed in the SQL statement?
> I meant to create the temp table named MyTab as passed to the SP from the
> statement.
> CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[MyProc] (@.MyTempTable nvarchar(50)) AS
> SELECT *
> INTO ##MyTempTable
> FROM Customers
> GO
>|||Tony,
Thanks for you help; the code you provided is exactly what I was looking for
.
"Tony Scott" wrote:
> Shariq,
> I have a little confusion as to what you are attempting to achieve.
> The short answer to what you asking is as follows:
> CREATE STORED PROCEDURE [dbo].[usp_My_SProc]
> @.MyTempTable nvarchar(50)=''
> AS
> If @.MyTempTable<>''
> BEGIN
> DECLARE @.sSTR varchar(2000)
> SET @.sSTR = ' '
> SET @.sSTR = @.sSTR + ' SELECT * INTO '
> SET @.sSTR = @.sSTR + '#' + @.MyTempTable
> SET @.sSTR = @.sSTR + ' FROM Customers '
> EXEC (@.sSTR)
> END
> This will achieve the result your question poses, but does not a lot to
> possibly achieve your intended goal.
> The one drawback to the above code is that the EXEC(@.sSTR) command runs in
> an independant thread from the Stored Procedure and such a table cannot be
> accessed from another thread, unless you use the ## prefix, but this, agai
n,
> brings up it's own dilemmas as the same Stored Procedure acn only be run o
nce
> at a time.
>
> "Shariq" wrote:
>