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Category: Error Handling

The Brokenness of TABLESAMPLE

Paul White walks us through some issues:

Initial testing went well, which was a pleasant surprise. Soon enough though, errors started to appear in the tool’s output. That’s not entirely unexpected since ensuring consistent results under high concurrency tends to expose all sorts of niggly edge cases. It’s still an annoyance because debugging edge cases in trigger code can be tricky and laborious.

What was a surprise though was the nature of the error messages.

Read on for the full story. Paul has also created a feedback issue covering a problem with the function.

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SQL Server Msg 3023 during DBCC SHRINKFILE

Tom Collins gets an error:

Question : Executing the following  Database shrinkfile activity and getting the error message

use myDatabase
DBCC SHRINKFILE (N’myDatabase_log’ , 0, TRUNCATEONLY)

Msg 3023, Level 16, State 2, Line 4
Backup, file manipulation operations (such as ALTER DATABASE ADD FILE) and encryption changes on a database must be serialized. Reissue the statement after the current backup or file manipulation operation is completed.

Read on for the answer.

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Automating Unforcing of Failed Query Store Forced Plans

Kendra Little has a script for us:

tldr; I’ve published a script to loop through all databases on an instance, identify if there are any query plans in a problematic “failed” forced state (which can hurt query performance), and un-force them if found. Get the dbo.dba_QueryStoreUnforceFailed stored procedure on GitHub.

This script is designed to work on SQL Server on-prem, in a VM, or in Azure SQL Managed Instance or SQL Server RDS. Since the script is instance-level and loops through all databases, this isn’t really designed for Azure SQL Database – and you don’t get a SQL Agent there anyway, so you probably want to change this around for that use case. The script is shared under the MIT license, feel free to contribute code and/or adapt away for your own uses.

Read on to learn more about what might cause these failure to occur and what you can do about them.

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Databricks Notebook Package Installation and Variables

Chen Hirsh diagnoses a problem:

A friend called to ask for my help with a weird issue. In a Databricks notebook using Python, he declares and assigns a variable in the first cell. Something like that:

my_var = 1

He then runs the rest of the notebook, and somewhere along the way, tries to use this variable, and gets this message:

NameError: name 'my_var' is not defined

Going back to cell 1, and checking the value of my_var, he gets the same error.

Read on for the root cause of the issue, as well as a pair of helpful tips from Chen.

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Reviewing the SQL Server Error Log

Jim Evans digs into the logs:

In SQL Server there are two primary sets of error logs. One for the database engine and a second for SQL Server Agent. Reviewing these logs is routine for Database Administrators and sometimes Developers when troubleshooting issues. What are the different ways to view these error logs? Are there different scenarios when you would use one view other another? Do any other error logs exist that SQL Server Professionals should review?

Read on for three ways to do this, including one outside of SQL Server itself.

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Error 1119 on Database Shrink

Kendra Little troubleshoots an error:

At times when shrinking a data file in a SQL Server or Azure SQL Managed Instance/Database, shrink operations may persistently fail with the error:

Msg 1119, Level 16, State 1, Line 11 Removing IAM page ([filenumber]:[pagenumber]]) failed because someone else is using the object that this IAM page belongs to. DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.

There’s not much documented on this error anywhere that I can find, so I’m sharing my experience with this error.

Click through to see how Kendra was able to get around this issue.

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Troubleshooting Non-Editable Power Query Parameters in Microsoft Fabric

Soheil Bakhshi digs into a problem:

Power Query is a powerful tool within the Microsoft Fabric environment, enabling users to manage data sources and transform data efficiently. However, a common issue you may face is that after publishing the Semantic Model, the Power Query parameters either do not appear or are greyed out, making them non-editable. In this post and its accompanying YouTube video, I’ll walk you through the steps to diagnose and fix these problems, ensuring that your parameters work as expected in your published semantic models.

Click through for the video and a pair of common reasons.

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Concurrent Index Creation in Postgres

Shayon Mukherjee recommends against a particular technique:

As a developer, you might have encountered situations where creating an index in PostgreSQL fails due to lock timeouts. In such scenarios, it’s tempting to use the IF NOT EXISTS as a quick fix and move on. However, this approach can lead to subtle and hard-to-debug issues in production environments.

Click through to learn more about how concurrent index creation works in Postgres and why the use of IF NOT EXISTS might not work the way you want.

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Power BI Report Server “Couldn’t Connect to the Analysis Services Server”

Deepthi Goguri grabs a patch:

When you check the Change log for Power BI Report Server, Version: 1.20.8910.25479 (build 15.0.1115.165), Released: May 28, 2024 release notes mentioned about the security change made during this update to add the environment variable and system variable on the Power BI Report Server machine.

Read on to learn more about this and what it takes to correct the issue.

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