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Category: Error Handling

Thoughts on Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization

Published 2023-08-15 by Kevin Feasel

Jared Poche shares some thoughts:

First, I wanted to point out that there are fixes to issues specific to Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2022. The issue itself is documented at the link below.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/performance/parameter-sensitive-plan-optimization?view=sql-server-ver16#known-issues

When I heard about the issue, I heard that it could cause SQL Server 2022 to cause stack dumps every 15 minutes. The time interval made me think it was related to the default interval for Query Store, and that seems to be the case.

Jared has several thoughts on the topic as he puts together a talk on PSPO.

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Tips for Limiting Redis Failures

Published 2023-07-31 by Kevin Feasel

Phil Booth provides the ammo and we provide the feet:

Production outages are great at teaching you how not to cause production outages. I’ve caused plenty and hope that by sharing them publicly, it might help some people bypass part one of the production outage learning syllabus. Previously I discussed ways I’ve broken prod with PostgreSQL and with healthchecks. Now I’ll show you how I’ve done it with Redis too.

For the record, I absolutely love Redis. It works brilliantly if you use it correctly. The gotchas that follow were all occasions when I didn’t use it correctly.

My one addition here is to be really careful if you use Redis as persistent storage rather than a cache. Redis as a cache is easy: if the server goes down or you have trouble, you simply have more database calls than normal. Redis as persistent storage is a much more complicated beast which seems to fall over a lot more often and is significantly more finicky about drivers.

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Conversion from XML to Target Collation Impossible

Published 2023-07-20 by Kevin Feasel

Chad Callihan has a mission, should you choose to accept it:

I recently ran into an error for a query that was casting XML to VARCHAR to search for a value. I have a bit of familiarity with the XML for these types of queries, so I was surprised when running the SELECT statement caused this error, which I had never seen before:

Msg 6355 “Conversion of one or more characters from XML to target collation impossible”

Click through for the solution. The real solution? NVARCHAR Everywhere.

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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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