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Category: Error Handling

Fixing an Error in DBCC CloneDatabase

Published 2024-07-18 by Kevin Feasel

Steve Jones runs into an issue:

This was an interesting error, and I was able to duplicate it, so I decided to write a post on how to find the problem and fix it. The error after running DBCC CLONEDATABASE is:

NO_STATISTICS and NO_QUERYSTORE options turned ON as part of VERIFY_CLONE.
Database cloning for 'atest' has started with target as 'aSmallTest'.
Msg 2601, Level 14, State 1, Line 11
Cannot insert duplicate key row in object 'sys.sysschobjs' with unique index 'clst'. The duplicate key value is (885578193).

The final key value (885578193) for you might be different, but the error is the same.

Read on to learn more about the issue, as well as how Steve was able to fix the problem.

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Dealing with Query Store in Error State

Published 2024-07-05 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler turns it off then back on again, like a true IT professional:

I recently received a complaint that Query Store for a particular database was turned off, which was strange as that particular database has seen quite a few performance issues and I know that I’d ensured Query Store was enabled in the past.

No problem, I flicked the switch and Query Store was enabled again.

Half an hour or so later and I’m being told that Query Store is again disabled. What’s going on?

Read on to learn what to do if you get stuck with this problem.

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Debugging Failed Function Calls in ADF

Published 2024-06-26 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword troubleshoots a problem:

I recently ran into an issue when trying to call a function from an ADF pipeline. The function returned a generic Internal Server Error with no details exposed. Here we’ll look at how to dig into the logs to identify the true cause of the failure.

In this instance the function was performing PGP encryption but this could apply to any function. Let’s start with the problem.

Click through for the very generic error message and how you can get the real details.

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Power BI Query Memory Limit

Published 2024-06-25 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb continues a series:

Continuing my series on Power BI memory errors (see part 1, part 2 and part 3), in this post I’ll look at the query memory limit which controls the amount of memory that an individual query can consume. This is a subject which I’ve talked about in a few blog posts in the past: hitting this limit is one of the reasons you’ll see the “This visual has exceeded the available resources” error which I blogged about here and and here. There’s also some official documentation here which is pretty good.

Read on to learn more about what settings you have available for it and a few more tips.

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Third Party Vendors and Missing tempdb Space

Published 2024-06-10 by Kevin Feasel

Tanayankar Chakraborty troubleshoots a strange issue:

Issue

An issue was brought to our attention recently where an azure SQL DB was throwing TempDB related errors although the customer felt that the TempDB usage never came close to the value published in the official Microsoft document. Here’s the error the customer had complained about:

Error

Here is a more detailed error text :

The database ‘tempdb’ has reached its size quota. Partition or delete data, drop indexes, or consult the documentation for possible resolutions.’. Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, ‘ResultSet’ property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.

This was an interesting problem and, admittedly, I didn’t predict the twist.

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System Views and Distributed Processing in Microsoft Fabric

Published 2024-06-10 by Kevin Feasel

Koen Verbeeck runs into an annoying error:

I have a metadata-driven ELT framework that heavily relies on dynamic SQL to generate SQL statements that load data from views into a respective fact or dimension. Such a task is well suited for generation, since the pattern to load a type 1 SCD, type 2 SCD or a fact table is always the same.

To read the metadata of the views, I use a couple of systems views, such as sys.views and sys.sql_modules. At some point, I join this metadata (containing info about the various columns and their data types) against metadata of my own (for example, what is the business key of this dimension). This all works fine in Azure SQL DB or SQL Server, but in my Fabric warehouse I was greeted with the following error:

The query references an object that is not supported in distributed processing mode.

Read on to learn more about why you get this error and one workaround for it.

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Power BI Command Memory Limit

Published 2024-06-04 by Kevin Feasel

Chris Webb is overdrawn at the memory bank:

Continuing my series on Power BI model memory errors (see part 1 and part 2), in this post I will look at the Command Memory Limit which restricts the amount of memory that XMLA commands like Create, Alter and most importantly Refresh and can use.

If you’ve ever been told that your semantic model should consume less than half the amount of memory available to it because memory consumption can double during a full refresh, then that is because of the Command Memory Limit. 

Read on to learn more about the Command Memory Limit and why this advice exists.

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Unhelpful Error Restoring Azure SQL MI Database

Published 2024-05-31 by Kevin Feasel

Kendra Little encounters an error:

What’s it like to be a Database Administrator for managed databases in Azure? Sometimes it’s a painful guessing game when a routine, core operation– restoring a database – fails with a most unhelpful error.

In this case, if the restore is run via PowerShell, following Microsoft guidance, the error message is:

Restore-AzSqlInstanceDatabase: Long running operation failed with status ‘Failed’. Additional Info: An unexpected error occured while processing the request. [sic]

Somehow the misspelling of ‘occurred’ stings a bit more. Did anyone review the PR for this code?

I’m trying to weigh in my mind whether this error is worse than “String or binary data would be truncated.” One the one hand, the spelling is correct in the latter error message. On the other hand, it uses passive voice. On the gripping hand, they’re both nigh-useless error messages. Hopefully the SQL MI team fixes Kendra’s error message at least as well as the database engine fixed the latter.

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Concatenating Strings and (N)VARCHAR Truncation

Published 2024-05-28 by Kevin Feasel

Vlad Drumea troubleshoots a common problem:

The code in this case is the GetStatsInfoForWholeDB.sql script that’s part of PSBlitz’s resources.
This script is used for, you wouldn’t believe by the name alone, getting statistics information for a specific database.

Due to the fact that it might be ran on Azure or on older versions of SQL Server, as well as on databases with incremental statistics, the best option for it was to use dynamic SQL.

In this case it uses a variable @SQL defined as NVARCHAR(MAX) to store the query that’s built at runtime and execute it via EXEC.

Read on for one of the most common issues you may run into around generating dynamic SQL.

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