TL;DR: use SET FMTONLY OFF
with OPENQUERY
, details below.
It appears that the link provided by Daniel E. is only part of the solution. For instance, if you try:
-- no need to use sp_addlinkedserver
-- must fully specify sp_, because default db is master
SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY(
[SERVERNAME\SQL2008],
'exec somedb.dbo.sp_spaceused ''Account''')
you will receive the following error:
The OLE DB provider "SQLNCLI10" for linked server "LOCALSERVER\SQL2008" supplied inconsistent metadata for a column. The name was changed at execution time.
I found the solution through this post, and then a blog-post on OPENQUERY, which in turn told me that until SQL2008, you need to use SET FMTONLY OFF
. The final solution, which is essentially surprisingly simple (and easier to accomplish since there is no need to specify a loopback linked server), is this:
SELECT * FROM OPENQUERY(
[SERVERNAME\SQL2008],
'SET FMTONLY OFF
EXEC somedb.dbo.sp_spaceused ''Account''')
In addition, if you haven't set DATA-ACCESS
, you may get the following error:
Server 'SERVERNAME\SQL2008' is not configured for DATA ACCESS.
This can be remedied by running the following command:
EXEC sp_serveroption 'SERVERNAME\SQL2008', 'DATA ACCESS', TRUE