Revoking all permissions from all user defined roles

To revoke all permissions granted to a role you can use "revoke all from <role>". That way you don't need to know the object names.

Please ignore the "revoke all from <role>" comment. That does not seem to be working.
So all that is usefull right now is getting the list of roles. Sorry.

Working...

"revoke all from <role>" isn't working.  I.e. I execute this statement , the run sp_helprotect and all the role's permissions are still there.  Also, I can still log on as a user of this role (with no permissions explicitly set) and still access data.  Any idea why?

Oops, when I submitted my last comment, I got your comment to the same effect.  I'm looking into the sp_helprotect sproc to see how to get a list of objects for a role.

OK, sorry for the false starts.
If you want to revoke all permissions on user created roles, then how about dropping all such roles and then recreating them, thus:

create table #role_names ([name] varchar(255))

insert #role_names
select [name] from pmdbreports.dbo.sysusers
  where issqlrole = 1 and gid <> 0

declare @name nvarchar(40)
declare @sql nvarchar(255)

declare roll_names cursor for
 select [name] from #role_names

open roll_names
FETCH NEXT FROM roll_names INTO @name

WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0
 BEGIN
  set @sql = 'sp_droprole ''' + @name + ''''
  print 'drop ' + @sql
  exec sp_executesql @sql
  set @sql = 'sp_addrole ''' + @name + ''''
  print 'add ' + @sql
  exec sp_executesql @sql
  FETCH NEXT FROM roll_names INTO  @name
 END
CLOSE roll_names
DEALLOCATE roll_names

drop table #role_names

The problem I see with this approach is that then I'd have to handle storing away users in those roles, and adding them back to the roles.

I'm close on an alteration of sp_helprotect to get a list of objects belonging to a role.  I'll post what I figure out.

OK, figured out how to do this, with your help.  Here is the script.

Declare @SQL varchar(500)
Declare @MoreRoles bit
Declare @CurrRole sysname
Declare @CurrObject varchar(128)

Declare DbRoles Cursor
For
    Select [name]
    From sysusers
    Where isSQLRole=1 and gid<>0

Open DbRoles
Fetch Next From DbRoles Into @CurrRole
While @@FETCH_STATUS=0
Begin
    Print @CurrRole + '...'
    -- For each role, loop through all objects and drop them
    Declare RoleObjects Cursor
    For
        Select Distinct object_name(id)
        From sysprotects
        Where user_name(uid)=@CurrRole

    Open RoleObjects
    Fetch Next From RoleObjects Into @CurrObject
    While @@FETCH_STATUS=0
    Begin
        Print 'Revoking right on ' + @CurrObject
        -- Drop all permissions for this object
        Set @SQL = 'Revoke All On ' + @CurrObject + ' FROM ' + @CurrRole
        Exec(@SQL)

        -- Get next object
        Fetch Next From RoleObjects Into @CurrObject
    End
   
    -- Clean up this cursor
    Close RoleObjects
    Deallocate RoleObjects

    -- Get next role
    Fetch Next From DbRoles Into @CurrRole
End    

Close DbRoles
Deallocate DbRoles
GO

Oh, the part from sp_helprotect is:

Select Distinct object_name(id)
From sysprotects
Where user_name(uid)=@CurrRole

Though sp_helprotect is a huge procedure, it turns out that this is the salient piece and its simple. (dont' look for this in sp_helprotect, this is from the bit that loads the temp table. The distinct is needed to remove duplicates.)

thank you!

for the points and the final info.