Today I found an interesting quirk of sp_rename: renaming a view, stored procedure, function or trigger will not update the object’s definition that is returned by the OBJECT_DEFINITION function. This is documented, but I think it might take people by surprise.

Example

So, if you first create the following view:

CREATE VIEW dbo.InitialViewName
AS
SELECT Id
FROM dbo.SampleTable

Then, you update its name:

EXEC sp_rename 'InitialViewName', 'UpdatedViewName'

Now, when you get the view’s definition:

SELECT OBJECT_DEFINITION(OBJECT_ID('UpdatedViewName'));

The result might surprise you

CREATE VIEW dbo.InitialViewName  AS  SELECT        Id  FROM            dbo.SampleTable

Notice it’s still InitialViewName. So, if you use the OBJECT_DEFINITION in your SQL scripts, you better stick to dropping and re-creating these objects.