How do I use the results of a stored procedure from within another?

Question

I have a stored procedure that I want to call from within another, and then loop through the results. Sort of like using a cursor with a stored procedure rather than a SQL select statement. I can't quite figure out how to do it.

I can get the whole result like this:

DECLARE @result int;
EXEC @result = sp_who;
PRINT @result;

Interestingly, this seems to change the type of @result to something other than int, but whatever. How do I then loop through the results, row by row? How do access the data from the individual columns? For example, how would I kill processes where the forth column (loginname) is like '%gatesb' or whatever?

Answer 1

Rewrite sp_who as a table function

Answer 2

You would declare a table variable to hold the results of the stored procedure and then loop through them in a while loop:

declare @temp table (
    idx int identity(1,1),
    field1 int,
    field2 varchar(max))

insert into @temp (field1, field2)
exec @result = sp_who

declare @counter int

set @counter = 1

while @counter < (select max(idx) from @temp)
begin
    -- do what you want with the rows here
    set @counter = @counter + 1
end

Answer 3

you can catch the results of a stored proc by inserting into a table that has matching columns...

create table #spWhoResults
    (spid smallint,
    ecid smallint,
    status nchar(60),
    loginame nchar(256),
    hostname nchar(256),
    blk char(5),
    dbname nvarchar(128),
    cmd nchar(32),
    request_id int)

go

insert  #spWhoResults
exec    sp_who


select  *
from    #spWhoResults

/* 
put your cursor here to loop #spWhoResults to 
perform whatever it is you wanted to do per row
*/

Answer 4

What Justin pointed out is what you have to do, but instead of doing

while @counter < (select max(idx) from @temp)

do this

declare @maxid int
select @maxid = max(idx), @counter = 1
from @temp
while @counter < @maxid begin
-- go on
  set @counter = @counter + 1
end

Also, if declaring the table as @temp doesn't work you could declare it as #temp.