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Category: Error Handling

Temp Tables in SSIS Data Sources

Published 2024-12-02 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword disappears in a flash:

When handing data we can make use of temporary tables to aid with separation or performance. However, they don’t always play nice with Integration Services packages.

If we set a source to call a procedure returning the contents of a temporary table we’ll see an error like below:

Read on for three options. It’s been a while, but I vaguely recall that you can use global temp tables (such as ##Results) and it will work, as those persist and are available to all sessions so long as there is some open session using them.

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Debugging in Databricks

Published 2024-11-19 by Kevin Feasel

Chen Hirsh enables a debugger:

Do you know that feeling, when you write beautiful code and everything just works perfectly on the first try?

I don’t.

Every time I write code It doesn’t work in the beginning, and I have to debug it, make changes, test it…

Databricks introduced a debugger you can use on a code cell, and I’ve wanted to try it for quite some time now. Well, I guess the time is now 

I’m having trouble in finding the utility for a debugger here. Notebooks are already set up for debugging: you can easily add or remove cells and the underlying session maintains state between cells.

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Query Processor Ran out of Internal Resources

Published 2024-10-31 by Kevin Feasel

David Fowler explains an error:

Recently I received a cry for help over Teams. The issue was that an application was throwing up the following SQL error,

The query processor ran out of internal resources and could not produce a query plan. This is a rare event and only expected for extremely complex queries or queries that reference a very large number of tables or partitions. Please simplify the query. If you believe you have received this message in error, contact Customer Support Services for more information.

I’ll be honest, that’s not one that I had seen before but it seemed pretty self explanatory. the query was just too complex for SQL to cope with. I asked what the query was, the answer was something similar to the snippet below,

Read on to learn what the problem was, as well as David’s answer. David had a simple rewrite retaining the IN clause, though you could also rewrite this with an INNER JOIN or even an EXISTS. One of those two alternative approaches might have a better performance profile, though there are no guarantees.

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Timeouts Attempting to Open Connections from High-Thread Applications

Published 2024-10-31 by Kevin Feasel

Jose Manuel Jurado Diaz works through a customer issue:

Recently, I worked on a service request that a customer application reported the following error connecting to the database: “Timeout attempting to open the connection. The time period elapsed prior to attempting to open the connection has been exceeded. This may have occurred because of too many simultaneous non-pooled connection attempts.“. 

Following, I would like to share the experience learned here.

The issue isn’t extremely common, but it does happen, especially when applications don’t use connection pooling.

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Configuring Database Mail in Azure SQL MI

Published 2024-10-23 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Brownsword sends an e-mail:

SQL Agent jobs allow us to schedule and automate tasks on a SQL Server instance. Crucially, when things go wrong we need to know about them. That’s why we use notifications.

Setting up Operators and job Notifications is as expected on a Managed Instance. However, when it comes to sending the notifications we may have a challenge, as shown in the SQL Agent Error Logs:

Read on for the solution.

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Troubleshooting Chains of Common Table Expressions

Published 2024-10-17 by Kevin Feasel

Jared Westover calls me out:

I started using Common Table Expressions (CTEs) in Oracle before Microsoft SQL Server and found them easier to read than a derived table. Something about reading from the top down just clicked in my brain. As the years have passed, I’m less of a fan for one reason: troubleshooting a chained CTE with several links is hard—especially when it’s someone else’s code. Even the ones I wrote years ago fill me with unease when something breaks. Is there an easier way to break down each link in the chain when things go wrong?

This is, I would argue, the biggest inconvenience around using common table expressions. The fact that SQL Server cannot materialize the contents of CTEs is likely a more prevalent problem, but challenges in how you can troubleshoot the individual parts of common table expressions are real.

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Restarting Failed Control Flows in Azure Data Factory

Published 2024-10-15 by Kevin Feasel

Meagan Longoria doesn’t want to repeat good work:

I presented at SQL Saturday Pittshburgh this past weekend about populating your data warehouse with a metadata-driven, pattern-based approach. One of the benefits I mentioned is that it’s easy to employ this pattern for restartability.

For instance, let’s say I am loading data from 30 tables and 5 files into the staging area of my data mart or data warehouse, and one of table loads fails. I don’t want to reload the other tables I just loaded. I want to load the ones that have not been recently loaded. Or let’s say I have 5 dimensions and 4 facts, and I had a failure loading a fact table. I don’t want to reload my dimensions, and I only want to reload the failed facts. How do we accomplish this?

Read on to learn how.

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Permissions and BACPAC Files in Azure SQL DB

Published 2024-10-10 by Kevin Feasel

Roberto Yonekawa diagnoses an error:

We had a support request where the customer was getting an error when trying to export his Azure SQL Database to a bacpac file using the SqlPackage command-line utility.

Error message:

Microsoft.Data.Tools.Diagnostics.Tracer Error: 19 : 2024-08-21T16:10:56 : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dac.DacServicesException: One or more unsupported elements were found in the schema used as part of a data package.

Error SQL71627: The element Permission has property Permission set to a value that is not supported in Microsoft Azure SQL Database v12.

Click through for the specific issue Roberto found. I’d imagine that there are other permission sets that are incompatible with Azure SQL Database and would cause this error message to pop up as well.

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