Category: Bugs

I had no sooner published my blog post about the coolness of Biml 2018 when I encountered a bug trying to use one of the features I really like – converting SSIS packages to Biml using (FREE!) BimlExpress 2018.

My first response was, “Durnit! This worked in the test versions.” My second response was to drop a note into an issue-tracking site Varigence set up to record these kinds of things.

And then I started getting emails similar to, “Hey Andy, I get this error when I try to use the new ‘Convert SSIS Packages to Biml’ feature”…

David Stein has a workaround for us until Varigence can fix the bug.

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Missing KB2919355 When Installing SQL Server

Published 2018-06-27 by Kevin Feasel

Ryan Allport explains how to install SQL Server 2016 on Windows Server 2012 R2 when you get the Rule “KB2919355 Installation” failed error message:

As you can see, the upgrade feature rules check failed around the KB2919355 installation. At this point, reading the error message, I assumed (I know, I know, it’s something we should never do as a DBA!) that the patch had been downloaded and applied during the latest round of Windows patching, and all that was required was a server reboot. I was wrong.

Upon running the upgrade again, I got the same error message. Hmm, annoying. So, after some Googling I was confident I knew what to do to resolve this; download and install the KB2919355 patch. So, I downloaded the patch from the official Microsoft website (KB2919355) and kicked off the installation.

There’s a bit more to it than “install the patch.”

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Error Processing SSIS Task When TargetServerVersion Is SQL Server 2016

Published 2018-05-14 by Kevin Feasel

Shabnam Watson diagnoses an error condition when trying to run an Analysis Services processing task inside SQL Server Integration Services:

I ran into this problem a while ago at a client. They upgraded from Visual Studio 2013 to 2015 and the SSAS processing tasks started to error out immediately. The solution turned out to be setting the TargetSeverVersion to anything but SQL Server 2016. In this case, it was set to 2014 and that fixed the error.

Recently I ran into this post https://twitter.com/SQLKohai/status/994335086425399297 by Matt Cushing (@SQLKohai) and decided to dig in more. Initially when I tested it, all was working fine. After I installed SSDT 2015 to test, I started getting the same error in SSDT 2017. I played around with a DLL and got SSDT 2017 to work with all TargetVersionServers again. At the end I managed to break it again after I went through an uninstall and reinstall of all versions of SSDT. The reason I did the reinstall of SSDT was that I thought I might have had a broken registry entry that I was hoping the installation would fix. This did not work!

Read on for the solution and a detailed dive into the problem.

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Azure Data Factory v2 And Decompression

Published 2018-04-23 by Kevin Feasel

Ben Jarvis notes a file naming bug with Azure Data Factory v2 when decompressing files:

ADF V2 natively supports decompression of files as documented at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/supported-file-formats-and-compression-codecs#compression-support. With this functionality ADF should change the extension of the file when it is decompressed so 1234_567.csv.gz would become 1234_567.csv however, I’ve noticed that this doesn’t happen in all cases.

In our particular case the file names and extensions of the source files are all uppercase and when ADF uploads them it doesn’t alter the file extension e.g. if I upload 1234_567.CSV.GZ I get 1234_567.CSV.GZ in blob storage rather than 1234_567.CSV.

Click through for more details and be sure to vote on his Azure Feedback bug if this affects you.

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The Non-Blocking Segment Operator

Published 2018-04-23 by Kevin Feasel

Hugo Kornelius notes a documentation bug with the Segment operator:

The Segment operator, like all operators, is described at the Books Online page mentioned above. Here is the description, quoted verbatim:

Segment is a physical and a logical operator. It divides the input set into segments based on the value of one or more columns. These columns are shown as arguments in the Segment operator. The operator then outputs one segment at a time.

Looking at the properties of the Segment operator, we do indeed see the argument mentioned in this description, in the Group By property (highlighted in the screenshot). So this operator reads the data returned by the Index Scan (sorted by TerritoryID, which is required for it to work; this is why the Index Scan operator is ordered to perform an ordered scan), and divides it into segments based on this column. In other words, this operator is a direct implementation of the PARTITION BY spefication. Every segment returned by the operator is what we would call a partition for the ROW_NUMBER() function in the T-SQL query. And this enables the Sequence Project operator to reset its counters and start at 1 for every new segment / partition.

Read on to understand the issue and see Hugo’s proof.

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Upgrading SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition

Published 2018-04-20 by Kevin Feasel

Jo Douglass hits an error when upgrading to SQL Server 2017 on Standard Edition:

A quick one to signal boost this issue and its solution, as I’m sure other people will run into it. If you’re on Standard Edition of SQL Server and upgrading to 2017, you might run into an issue where the database services portion of the upgrade fails. This seems to be related to SSIS.

If you experience this problem, mid-way through the upgrade you’ll receive this error in a pop-up:

Wait on the Database Engine recovery handle failed. Check the SQL Server error log for potential causes.

At the end of the upgrade, it will show that the database services section has failed. Checking the error log will show this:

Script level upgrade for database ‘master’ failed because upgrade step ‘ISServer_upgrade.sql’ encountered error 917, state 1, severity 15.

Read on for the answer and a workaround.

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Null Reference Exception In SSMS 17.5

Published 2018-03-30 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler notes a bug in SQL Server Management Studio 17.5 around availability group failover:

After a spot of head scratching and thinking that there was something wrong with my AG setup, it turns out that there’s a bug in SSMS. I was running SSMS 17.5 although this may well also affect earlier versions.

Looking at the release notes for SSMS 17.6, one of the bug fixes that this version addresses is…

Fixed an issue when the primary is down and manually failover to secondary, a NullReferenceException will be thrown.

David notes that upgrading fixed his issue; read on for more.

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Query Store Deadlock When Creating Databases

Published 2018-03-21 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Mallon ran into a weird issue with Query Store:

I tried the configuration a couple of times just to make sure it wasn’t a one-off problem. I installed the latest Cumulative Update (CU). I made sure nothing else was connected to the instance. I rebooted my machine. I restarted services. I banged my head against the wall. I asked a friend if I was insane or stupid. After confirming that I was both, my friend Aaron Bertrand (blog|twitter) confirmed it wasn’t a problem for him.

I discovered I could reproduce the problem simply by running the same simple statement that SSRS used when creating the ReportServer database. SSRS uses a non-standard collation, and specifying that collation seems to be the difference in causing the deadlock. Then I discovered that specifying ANY non-standard collation was causing the deadlock. This had nothing to do with SSRS, and everything to do with non-default collations.

Vote for his User Voice item too.

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Invalid Dates And Power BI

Published 2018-03-09 by Kevin Feasel

Melissa Coates notes a discrepancy between the Desktop and Service versions of Power BI:

Last week I got involved with a customer issue. A refresh of the data imported to a PBIX always works in Power BI Desktop, but the refresh operation intermittently fails in the Power BI Service. Their workaround had been to refresh the PBIX in Desktop and re-upload the file to the Service. This post is about finding and fixing the root cause of the issue – this is as of March 2018, so this behavior may very well change in the future.

Turns out, the source of the problem was that the customer’s Open Orders table can contain invalid dates – not all rows, just some rows. Since Open Orders data can fluctuate, that explains why it presented as an intermittent refresh issue. Here’s a simple mockup that shows one row which contains an invalid date:

At this point, we have two open questions:
(1) What is causing the refresh error?
(2) Why is the refresh behavior different in the Service than the Desktop tool?

Read on for the explanation of the difference, as well as a fix to prevent refresh errors due to invalid dates.

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Read-Only Databases And Single-User Mode

Published 2018-02-26 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler notes an old bug in SQL Server 2012 and 2014 which bit him recently:

Here’s a strange one that I’ve recently come across. I had a customer report that their log shipping restore jobs were chock a block of errors. Now, the logs seem to have been restoring just fine but before every restore attempt, the job is reporting the error,

Error: Failed to update database “DATABASE NAME” because the database is read-only.

Unfortunately I haven’t got any direct access to the server but their logshipping is setup to disconnect users before and leave the database in standby after. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, I asked the customer to send me a trace file covering the period that the restore job ran.

Read on for the details and keep those servers patched.

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