How do you return the column names of a table?

Question

How would I return the column names of a table using SQL Server 2008? i.e. a table contains these columns- id, name, address, country and I want to return these as data.

Answer 1

You can use the stored procedure sp_columns:

exec sp_columns <table name>

Or you write a select statement from information_schema.columns:

select * from information_schema.columns where table_name = 'tableName'