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Category: Error Handling

Service Broker and the Unstoppable SQL Server Instance

Published 2023-07-10 by Kevin Feasel

Sean Gallardy shuts it all down:

I was sent a quite an interesting email stating that SQL Server would not shut down. Attempting to stop the service via services or the SQL Server Configuration Manager resulted in a timeout with SQL Server still running. Trying to execute the shutdown with and without NOWAIT T-SQL command resulted in the same, the process still running. Seems quite weird that SQL Server just refuses to shutdown!

Click through for Sean’s investigations, what the result was, and how the customer ultimately decided to deal with it.

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Azure DataSync: Cannot Insert NULL Value

Published 2023-07-07 by Kevin Feasel

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz does some sleuthing:

In this blog article, we will delve into a common error encountered when synchronizing data with Azure SQL DataSync. We’ll explore the error message “Error #1: SqlException Error Code: -2146232060 – SqlError Number: 515, Message: Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘ID’, table ‘dbo.Customers’; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails. SqlError Number: 3621, Message: The statement has been terminated.” We will provide a detailed explanation of the error and its possible causes, followed by a T-SQL code snippet that reproduces the error scenario.

Click through for four possible causes.

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Trace Flag 460 and String Truncation

Published 2023-07-05 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan enables a trace flag:

In SQL Server 2016 and 2017, trace flag 460 can be used to gather additional details about string truncation errors. You may be familiar with the “String or binary data would be truncated” error message. Have you been left wondering what would be truncated? This is where trace flag 460 comes in. When enabled, the error message will include details on where exactly the potential truncation is taking place.

Read on to see if this is something you might benefit from enabling.

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Listing Available Properties in Azure Data Factory

Published 2023-07-03 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Leonard builds a list:

Did you know Azure Data Factory (ADF) will actually list available properties? It will. One of the things I cover in my ADF training titled Master the Fundamentals of Azure Data Factory is this handy troubleshooting tip.

Read on to see how, though I’d personally like something which is a bit faster than waiting for the thing to execute and getting back what my choices are.

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Finding the Actual Error Line in sp_executesql

Published 2023-06-23 by Kevin Feasel

Thom Andrews solves a problem:

Notice that the error line states line 2 not line 8, which is the line the sys.sp_executesql was called on. Knowing the line the error occured on within the dynamic batch is certainly important, but if you’re working with multiple dynamic batches you have no way of knowing which dynamic batch might have produced the error; was it the one executed on line 100? Line 200? Line 350?

Solving this problem wasn’t wasn’t exactly simple, and it came with a couple of caveats.

Click through for the approach. As Thom mentions, it isn’t perfect, but it is reasonable and interesting.

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Power BI Visual Has Exceeded the Available Resources

Published 2023-06-21 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb diagnoses an error:

One of my most popular blog posts of the last few years is this one on the “Visual has exceeded available resources” error in the Power BI Service:

https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/2020/01/20/visual-has-exceeded-the-available-resources-error-power-bi/

This error only used to appear in the Power BI Service, but the good news is – and trust me, this is good news – it may now appear in Power BI Desktop too following the May 2023 release.

It’s not often good news that you get a new error, but knowing that the Service will behave a certain way and replicating that on Desktop, at least it prevents an issue from popping up in production that you can’t find during initial development.

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Commits, Auto versus Manual

Published 2023-06-20 by Kevin Feasel

Chen Hirsh switches platforms and hits a nasty surprise:

Anyway, I altered some views and stored procedures in the development environment, and after getting approval from the testers, tried to make the same changes in the production environment.

And then something strange occurred, I run an alter view command, and DBeaver told me the command run successfully. But when I ran a select from that view, it still had the old logic before the change. Right clicking the view, and getting its code, showed that it really hasn’t change.

I solved that mystery quickly, though I’ve also worked with auto-commit platforms (SQL Server) and platforms where the default commit is manual (Oracle, Postgres) and have been burned the same way in the past.

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Missing Index Hints and Index Rebuilds

Published 2023-06-13 by Kevin Feasel

Forrest McDaniel abuses that poor server:

The prod version of this issue manifested as 1-3 minutes of SCH-M blocking for index ops, yet only on a single server; I couldn’t replicate it anywhere else. Of course, bad blocking meant nasty timeouts, and that in turn meant I was reluctant to run live diagnostics. Better to just stop index rebuilds. One does not take down production in order to test weird SQL behavior.

An important clue came from a tiny table with a rebuild, and is visible in the whoisactive screenshot above. Why would such a small rebuild need so much CPU? That worker was definitely doing something – the question was what.

Read on to find out the answer, a repro script (that you should not run in your own production environment!), and what you can do about it.

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Could Not Update the Metadata that Indicates Database Enabled for CDC

Published 2023-05-22 by Kevin Feasel

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz troubleshoots an issue in Azure SQL DB:

Today, we got a error message while trying to enable cdc for a database using the sqladmin user. Our customer got the error message: Msg 22830, Level 16, State 1, Procedure sys.sp_cdc_enable_db_internal, Line 283 [Batch Start Line 0]
Could not update the metadata that indicates database XYZ is enabled for Change Data Capture. The failure occurred when executing the command ‘SetCDCTracked(Value = 1)’. The error returned was 33171: ‘Only active directory users can impersonate other active directory users.’. Use the action and error to determine the cause of the failure and resubmit the request.

Read on to understand what the problem is and how you can resolve it.

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SQL Agent and Memory Consumption

Published 2023-05-22 by Kevin Feasel

Sean Gallardy performs some troubleshooting:

I was asked if I knew any reason why SQL Agent would be using “a bunch” of memory and more cpu than normal. You and I, reader, now have the same information to go on. What do you do? Think about for a minute or two if you want before reading on. I’m not saying the way I did it was the way to do it or the only way, but I gave an action plan for data capture and once data was in hand, was solved in a few minutes. There are all sorts of things that can cause this in a program, but Agent typically doesn’t use a whole lot, unless it’s executing many concurrent T-SQL jobs (which, it really shouldn’t be, get enterprise level scheduling) and even then, the memory should deallocate.

My first inclination turned out to be right: I figured it had to do with a job running. The specifics, that was something I wasn’t sure about, but Sean takes us through the troubleshooting process.

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