SQL Script for Constrains

A quick T-SQL snippet I dug up from 2009: how to list every foreign key in a SQL Server database, with the tables and columns on both sides of the relationship. The script below still works unchanged on SQL Server 2022 and Azure SQL — the sys.foreign_keys / sys.foreign_key_columns catalog views have been stable since SQL Server 2005.

SELECT
    f.name AS ForeignKey,
    OBJECT_NAME(f.parent_object_id) AS TableName,
    COL_NAME(fc.parent_object_id, fc.parent_column_id) AS ColumnName,
    OBJECT_NAME(f.referenced_object_id) AS ReferenceTableName,
    COL_NAME(fc.referenced_object_id, fc.referenced_column_id) AS ReferenceColumnName
FROM sys.foreign_keys AS f
    INNER JOIN sys.foreign_key_columns AS fc
        ON f.OBJECT_ID = fc.constraint_object_id
ORDER BY TableName;

(I’ve added the ORDER BY — the original dumped rows in catalog order, which makes the output needlessly hard to scan.)

Notes from 2026

• It’s “constraints”, not “constrains” — the original title had the typo; the query itself was fine.
• Filter to one table with WHERE OBJECT_NAME(f.parent_object_id) = 'MyTable' when you just need the incoming references for a specific table.
• Check enforced status: f.is_disabled and f.is_not_trusted tell you whether a foreign key is actually being enforced (FKs created with WITH NOCHECK are untrusted and the optimizer will skip them).
• Alternative: the graphical equivalent lives in SSMS under the table’s Keys node, but scripting it out like this is the only practical option across a whole database.