Querying changing table name

You'll need a dynamic query.

DECLARE @TableName AS sysname
DECLARE @MySelect AS VARCHAR(MAX)

SET @TableName='Metric2824'

SET @MySelect = 'SELECT * FROM ' + @TableName

EXEC(@MySelect)

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You don't change that query. The user or process, which is creating that table is responsible for updating your view.

But Vitor is right, you need under most circumstances dynamic SQL for that. This should be the last step in the data import/table creation process:

DECLARE @alterview NVARCHAR(MAX) = N'ALTER VIEW Query AS SELECT M.number, M.Created FROM ? M;';
DECLARE @tablename sysname;

SET @tablename = ( SELECT TOP 1
                            T.name
                   FROM     sys.tables T
                   WHERE    T.name LIKE 'Metric____'
                   ORDER BY T.name DESC
                 );

SET @alterview = REPLACE(@alterview, '?', @tablename);

EXECUTE (@alterview);

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>I go in on a daily basis and change the numbers to the maximum number
A vastly better idea would be to keep the table name the same but add a date column that stores the date of the data.  That way no one will have to use dynamic SQL to concatenate table names with the date when consuming this table.

Another option is to have virtual tables, i.e. have a common table, with a field called TableName or something like that, and let users put data in the same table, with different TableName value each time. Then you can query it easily with 'select * from commonTable where TableName = (SELECT max(TableName) from commonTable)'

You can avoid dynamic SQL if you can insure that only one copy of this code can run at one time.

Create a unique synonym for that code, then dynamically alter the synonym to match the new table name, like this:

DECLARE @current_table_name nvarchar(128)

SELECT TOP (1) @current_table_name = name
FROM sys.tables
WHERE name LIKE 'Metric%'
ORDER BY CAST(SUBSTRING(name, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', name), 128) AS int) DESC

EXEC('IF OBJECT_ID(''dbo.MySyn'') IS NOT NULL DROP SYNONYM dbo.MySyn')
EXEC('CREATE SYNONYM dbo.MySyn FOR dbo.' + @current_table_name)

--from this point on, the code process "dbo.MySyn" as the "table" name, w/o needing dynamic SQL
SELECT *
FROM dbo.MySyn
WHERE ...

Hi

Thanks for the answers I have tried

DECLARE @current_table_name nvarchar(128)

SELECT TOP (1) @current_table_name = name
FROM sys.tables
WHERE name LIKE 'Metric%'
ORDER BY CAST(SUBSTRING(name, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', name), 128) AS int) DESC

EXEC('IF OBJECT_ID(''dbo.MySyn'') IS NOT NULL DROP SYNONYM dbo.MySyn')
EXEC('CREATE SYNONYM dbo.MySyn FOR dbo.' + @current_table_name)

--from this point on, the code process "dbo.MySyn" as the "table" name, w/o needing dynamic SQL
SELECT *
FROM dbo.MySyn

I get the error message when running it

Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value 'Metric' to data type int.

Then you have non-numeric chars after the first numeric char.  If you always need to pick up exactly 4 digits, you can do this:

SELECT TOP (1) @current_table_name = name
FROM sys.tables
WHERE name LIKE 'Metric%'
ORDER BY CAST(SUBSTRING(name, PATINDEX('%[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%', name), 4) AS smallint) DESC

Thanks for getting back to me

I have had a look at some of the older tables and not all have 4 digits which is causing the problem

Examples

Metric_Draft
Metric94
Metric961

Why? You said the newer have all four Digits. Then just look for These tables. Either 'Metric____' or 'Metric[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]', depending on your nameing scheme.