Need to determine if a column exists or not

I am in a situation where I need to determine is a column exists in a database or not.

Does anyone know a way to do this.

If you are asking the "Why would one need to do this!", that I have seen in response to others ?'s that are like this.

I will explain.

Overview: I have an application that executes scripts using the Oracle OLEDB provider, the application queries a database, and determines what changes need to be made to a customers database. It then executes a SQL script based on the determination made.

Problem: Somewhere in the past a bad version of a script file was distributed to an undetermined amount of customers, this file did NOT add a column X to the database. So we are left with some customers that DO have column X and some that DON'T.

We can't just drop column X for the ones that already have it, because they have data in the field. And creating temp tables seems like a pain.

Resolution(hopefully): Find a way to do determine if the column exists... If it does not we need to add it.
Example (not intended to be Oracle Syntax), If ColumnX.Exists Then

    Alter table TableName Add X
End If

If we can do this, everyone is happy. And we don't have some customers with, and some without. Received on Thu Oct 17 2002 - 17:04:01 CDT