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Category: Error Handling

Replication from 2000 to 2012

Published 2023-01-12 by Kevin Feasel

Deepthi Gogrui pulls a fast one:

The scenario that I faced was little challenging. We had SQL Server 2012 production server replicating data to a Server 2000 which is used for reporting purposes. Subscriber SQL Server 2000 used by the reporting team were not ready to upgrade the Server as they need to rewrite their entire application as it was using vb6 code. They need a strategy where the data can still be replicated without upgrading the Server.

As I researched, I found that it is not compatible version but planned to test the replication to see if somehow it works. I tested the replication between SQL Server 2012 as a publisher and SQL Server 2000 as subscriber. I was able to setup the transactional replication between the servers for the database but found during the initial initialization snapshot, the ANSI_PADDING setting in the snapshot generated .sch files caused the issue while the distribution job runs. 

Read on for the solution. This turned out to work despite Microsoft’s official guidance that they only support replication between SQL Server instances within two versions of each other.

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OData Feeds and Dynamic Data Source Errors

Published 2023-01-09 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb handles an error:

I’ve blogged about the “dynamic data sources” error and the Web.Contents function several times (most recently here), main post here, but never about the fact that you can encounter the same error when working with OData data sources and the OData.Feed function. More importantly, while it seems like the solution to the problem is the same for both functions this is not the case! In fact, the solution may be simpler than you might think.

Click through for an example.

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Testing BIGINT Support in Applications

Published 2023-01-04 by Kevin Feasel

Michael J. Swart reminds us that it’s not just the database which needs to be able to handle large values:

In the past I’ve written about monitoring identity columns to ensure there’s room to grow.

But there’s a related danger that’s a little more subtle. Say you have a table whose identity column is an 8-byte bigint. An application that converts those values to a 4-byte integer will not always fail! Those applications will only fail if the value is larger than 2,147,483,647.

This post specifically pertains to identity columns but don’t forget those non-identity columns when testing.

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Avoiding Problems with DAX Window Functions

Published 2022-12-28 by Kevin Feasel

Jeffrey Wang shares a few tips to avoid issues with window functions in DAX:

Several people had reported running into errors when trying the window functions on fact tables. Let’s look at an example by first adding a calculated table of three columns to the model that is defined by the following DAX expression, and then, add all three columns to a table visual as shown in Figure 1.

Read on for more. This is an area where expected behavior does differ from what you get with window functions in T-SQL.

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Finding Rogue Line Feeds

Published 2022-12-23 by Kevin Feasel

Bill Fellows finds out whose line (feed) it was, anyway:

I ran into an issue today that I wanted to write about so that maybe I remember the solution. We ran into a case where the source data in a column had an unprintable character. In this case, it was a line feed character, which is ASCII value 10, and they had 7 instances in this one row. “How did that get in there? Surely that’s an edge case and we can just ignore it,” and dear reader, I’ve been around long enough to know that this is likely a systemic situation.

Click through for two ways of answering this against data already in SQL Server, as well as one additional route explained but sans demonstration.

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Solving Common CALCULATE Filter Argument Errors

Published 2022-12-08 by Kevin Feasel

Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari catalog some errors:

The expression contains columns from multiple tables, but only columns from a single table can be used in a True/False expression that is used as a table filter expression.

This error is seen when the predicate includes column references from more than one table. For example, if we need a measure that returns the sales made to customers living in the same country as the store, we could try to write the following measure:

Read on for several examples and solid guidance on how to resolve these common issues.

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InvalidAbfsRestOperationException in Synapse Managed VNet

Published 2022-12-07 by Kevin Feasel

Kamil Nowinski goes down a rabbit hole:

This happens on the customer’s Synapse workspace where we have a public network disabled, so only private endpoint and managed VNET are available. Additionally, you probably spotted, that it took over 3 minutes to actually get this message. Hence, as a next step, in order to minimize the potential causes I simplified the query to make sure I have access to the Storage, by listing the files:

Click through for a story of pain, followed by glorious resolution.

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Tracking Database Errors with Extended Events

Published 2022-12-07 by Kevin Feasel

Eitan Blumin is watching you:

But interestingly enough – we would be getting an added benefit here. Even if there is no SQL injection attack, it’s still possible that such errors would be raised by the application – simply due to bugs.

Furthermore, these errors in the database may be happening without anyone even noticing! How could that be, you ask? Well, it could be due to bad error handling that “swallows” the error entirely, or because the errors are logged but no one is bothering to look at the logs, or maybe because the errors are caught but an undetailed error message is logged/displayed to the user (I can’t even count how many times I encountered “general database error” messages in applications), or because the developers simply decided to mark this as a “known issue” that they didn’t bother to fix and they didn’t think to ask their DBA about it… The reasons are numerous and varying.

Click through for the scripts. I had built something similar about a decade ago, a simple WPF app which watched for errors. I messaged him with something like “You missed a comma in that IN clause” and I saw him pop up from his cubicle and look around, trying to figure out how I could peek over his shoulder and see the query.

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Text Concatenation and Dataset Refresh Errors

Published 2022-11-30 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb follows up on a prior post:

One of the most popular topics I’ve ever written about here is the dataset refresh errors you get with dynamic data sources and the Web.Contents function in Power BI (see here and here for example). Recently I learned about an interesting new detail regarding this problem that I thought was worth blogging about, and which may help someone trying to troubleshoot it.

Read on for the scenario, as well as what you can do to avoid an issue.

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