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Category: Error Handling

Comparing xp_readerrorlog and sp_readerrorlog

Published 2026-09-18 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones looks at a pair of procedures:


I was creating a question on sp_readerrorlog and realized that this procedure is different from the one it wraps: xp_readerrorlog. This post digs into a few differences.

Click through for the answer, though Steve’s reference of sp_readerrorlog being “new” is, I think, not quite right. I’m pretty sure that both sp_readerrorlog and xp_readerrorlog were introduced in SQL Server 2005. I did dig up a Rodney Landrum article from April of 2010 talking about sp_readerrorlog, so it was at least in SQL Server 2008.

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Certificate-Based Authentication and Availability Groups

Published 2026-09-17 by Kevin Feasel

Jordan Boich shares a story:

A few months after a clean migration, replication between the nodes in the global primary AG in a Distributed Availability Group (DAG) just stopped. There were no new deployments, config changes, or specific warning signs prior to this. Windows patching had occurred, the servers rebooted like they usually would, and the AG never came back together.

I know for myself, one of the most frustrating phrases that gives me the sense of impending doom is “nothing changed, why is this breaking?!”. That’s exactly what was going on here.

Read on to see how an innocent-looking configuration setting can cause issues down the road.

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T-SQL Tuesday 202 Round-Up

Published 2026-09-15 by Kevin Feasel

Marlon Ribunal summarizes a group of outages:

I expected stories about bad queries, failed deployments, storage problems, or maybe a database that decided to have a very bad day. What I got was much more interesting.

There were stories about ransomware, corrupted databases, deleted storage, power and cooling failures, an identity column reaching its limit, and even a floppy disk. A server Meltdown too.

Some of these outages lasted hours. Others lasted days or even weeks.

Click through for the list.

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Troubleshooting a Fabric Copy Job Connection Closure

Published 2026-09-14 by Kevin Feasel

Reitse Eskens debugs an issue:

This is a very common setup that usually works just fine.

Yet, I ran into something weird that I wanted to share with you. When I set up this copy job, I could reach the database, preview the data, and create the job. No issues. But when I started the actual data transfer, the job ran for two minutes and thirteen to sixteen seconds before throwing an error. On every table.

Click through for the error message, the cause of the error, and how to solve it.

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A Pernicious Floppy Disk

Published 2026-09-11 by Kevin Feasel

Deb Melkin deals with disaster:

One morning, the help desk support person came over and said this one client was having performance issues. This was one of the cases where we would just reboot. It was early and there would be plenty of time for everything to be back up and running before the system was needed. So I gave the go ahead to reboot the server.

This did not go well. Read on for the rest of the story.

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Fixing a Problem from the Naval Yard

Published 2026-09-10 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Levy tells us a story:

A buddy of mine invited me to take a road trip and join him in Philadelphia, PA to take a tour of the USS New Jersey while she was in drydock for its required museum ship maintenance. Quite possibly a once in a lifetime opportunity – we wouldn’t be touring the inside of the ship, we would be walking around underneath her, on the floor of the drydock. I hit the road on Friday, and picked him up at the airport. We got dinner, unwound from our respective travels, and planned out the following day.

Click through to see what happened next.

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To Make a DBA

Published 2026-09-10 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword tells his origin story:

I enjoy a good war story.

But no, this isn’t the time Azure blindsided me, when service accounts were locked, or when I left a transaction open and halted a production system (easily fixed by closing SSMS 😅). Mine is a pivotal personal moment.

Andy humbly leaves out the part where he was hand-to-hand kung fu fighting a series of ninjas while doing all of this, but you can just assume that in there.

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Blind Spots and Troubleshooting a Cluster Problem

Published 2026-09-09 by Kevin Feasel

Alexander Arvidsson tells a story:

The patient was a misbehaving SQL Server 2014 running in a two-node cluster. It was your garden-variety cluster with a shared disk and a remote witness. In my experience, as long as the customer has enough know-how to maintain a cluster like this, it’s essentially bulletproof.

This specific cluster was not.

Click through for the story, as well as a reminder of why people in mission-critical situations tend to follow checklists and say the items aloud.

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REGEXP_LIKE() and Its Return Value

Published 2026-09-01 by Kevin Feasel

Reitse Eskens troubleshoots an error:

I’ve declared a variable and assigned it a value. Now, I want to check if my variable matches the regular pattern of Dutch postal codes. These codes are four numbers followed by two letters. Using a regular expression helps check validity.

My expectation was that this query would return either 1 or TRUE. In any case, a result telling me that the postal code is valid. Instead, it throws an ‘Incorrect syntax error near the keyword ‘REGEXP_LIKE’.

Click through for the screenshot and the explanation.

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Identity Column Reseeding and Clashes

Published 2026-09-01 by Kevin Feasel

Dualcore DBA violates Betteridge’s Law of Headlines:

I recently had cause to reseed an identity column on a table in SQL Server, which got me wondering “If we reseed an identity column to a value lower than the existing identity values in the column, could it cause a clash?” Because why wouldn’t you wonder if you can cause something to break, whilst performing a fairly simple task!?

Let’s find out what happens…

Click through for the demonstration.

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