So if you need to rename a table sp_rename is what you would use. You would do something like the following:
exec sp_rename ‘oldname’, ‘newname’;
Here is a gotcha, it doesn’t take into account a table name that has a dot in the name. For example a table like dbo.[employee.info] will create this error:
Msg 15225, Level 11, State 1, Procedure sp_rename, Line 332
No item by the name of ‘dbo.[employee.info]’ could be found in the current database ‘database’, given that @itemtype was input as ‘(null)’.
The parsing mechanism in the stored procedure will parse it incorrectly.
The Workaround
Use the fully qualified domain name of the table (ie. databasename.schema.tablename). I found that this will work in these cases.
Refactoring Self 