Data Type Changing in UNION

An interesting issue came up recently where a union was creating a rounding problem. One side of the UNION contained a field with data type NUMBERIC(38,2) and the other side, (the equivalent field) was DECIMAL(24,9). One field having the bigger precision (number of digits to the left of the decimal point) and the other have a bigger scale (number of digits to the right of the decimal point)..

Let’s  see it in action..

SELECT CAST(GETDATE() AS NUMERIC(38,2)) [Test1]

Result:

SELECT CAST(GETDATE() AS DECIMAL(24,9)) [Test2]

Result:

And when we union them together: 

SELECT CAST(GETDATE() AS NUMERIC(38,2)) [Test3]

UNION ALL

SELECT CAST(GETDATE() AS DECIMAL(24,9)) [Test3]

Result:

The answer lies in the fact that SQL Server will preserve the biggest scale over the biggest precision. After all I’d be far more annoyed if I lost £1000 that .0120144414324p..

The solution to this problem is to ensure that you cast to the same data type in both of your queries to ensure you know the data types that will come out of the other end.

SQL Server – Find all non empty tables

So there are a couple of ways to do this, one is to go to every table in your database and check whether there is data, or you can go to the indexes and check the row count, here I’ll show you how to do both:

1: hit every table (don’t do this in a production environment or your DBAs will go mental..

IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#Tables') IS NOT NULL
BEGIN
	DROP TABLE #Tables;
END

--Create some temp tables and declare variables
CREATE TABLE #Tables
(
TableId INTEGER IDENTITY(1,1),
TableName VARCHAR(100),
HasRows BIT,
Processed BIT
);


DECLARE @Result TABLE
(
Result INT
);

DECLARE @TableCount INT = 0, @i INT = 1;

DECLARE @CurrentTable NVARCHAR(150);

--Get the name of each table in the database wrapped in square brackets.
INSERT INTO #Tables (TableName, HasRows, Processed)
SELECT '[' + s.name + '].[' + o.name + ']', 0, 0
FROM sys.objects o
INNER JOIN sys.schemas s ON s.schema_id = o.schema_id
WHERE type = 'u'
--AND o.name IN (N'Tbl_Name','Tbl_OtherTable');

SELECT @TableCount = COUNT(1) FROM #tables;

--Loop through all of the tables and check if there are rows
WHILE @i <= @TableCount
BEGIN

SELECT @CurrentTable = 'SELECT TOP 1 1 FROM ' + TableName FROM #Tables WHERE TableId = @i;

--PRINT @CurrentTable;

INSERT INTO @Result EXEC sp_executesql @CurrentTable;

--Populate the result table
UPDATE t SET t.HasRows = Result
FROM #Tables t
INNER JOIN @Result r ON t.TableId = @i;

SET @i = @i + 1;
DELETE FROM @Result;

END

--Get the rows we're interested in
SELECT *
FROM #Tables
WHERE HasRows = 1

 

The other way is to hit the indexes and check the row counts:

SELECT DISTINCT s.name [Schema], o.name [Table]--, i.name [IndexName], p.[rows] [RowCount]
FROM sys.objects o
INNER JOIN sys.schemas s	ON s.schema_id = o.schema_id
INNER JOIN sys.indexes i	ON i.object_id = o.object_id
INNER JOIN sys.partitions p ON p.index_id = i.index_id
								AND p.object_id = i.object_id
WHERE o.type = 'U'
AND p.[rows] > 0
ORDER BY s.name, o.name

 

You can remove the DISTINCT and uncomment i.name and p.rows to get the count of rows in each index.

 

 

SSIS Cache Transform – Failed to prepare the cache for new data

Encountered this error today when using a cache transform to populate a lookup cache with some data that I’d look up against multiple times:

I hadn’t set up the cache transform to use a .caw file (more info here), so there were no permissions issues with writing to disk, all that should be happening is writing to memory. Here’s what my SSIS package looked like when the error was received:

In the above we get the number of days worth of data to load and then load each day separately into the destination table (we’re loading each day as we hit some external limits if we don’t). The issue here was you can’t overwrite or append data to the cache. So all that was required was to move the ‘Load the lookup cache’ step outside of the for loop.

After the cache was moved out of the loop, it loaded successfully.

 

MSBuild – Missing values for the following SqlCmd variables

Today our automated build broke with a strange error:

Missing values for the following SqlCmd variables: DW

We have a couple of references to other databases in our build specifically to deal with warnings thrown by temporary cross database references. One of which is master and the other is another database on the same server:

The build was failing due to the reference to the DW database. I’d removed the reference and added it back in to see if that made a difference, and checked that it matched what was in live, no dice. Still broken.

What I’d overlooked was the project properties. When a new database reference is added it automatically comes with a new SQLCMD variable that you can set, which looks like this:

Having this reference was causing the Build to try and use it, which wasn’t required. Simply removing this variable solved the problem, as our build server already has a copy of the referenced database.

 

Scripting DROP and CREATE SQL Server Agent Jobs

Something to watch out for..

When Scripting a SQL Server Agent Job as drop and create in SSMS watch out that the generated script uses the job_name to check if the job exists and then job_id to delete it. If you want your scripts to be re-runnable then make sure you change the generated script as per the below:

Before: Notice that the @job_id is used, when you drop this job and recreate it, a new job_id will be generated, meaning you can’t your script twice.

/****** Object:  Job [SSIS_Framework_Demand_Load_Full]    Script Date: 07/11/2016 15:49:17 ******/
IF  EXISTS (SELECT job_id FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobs_view WHERE name = N'SSIS_Framework_Demand_Load_Full')
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_delete_job @job_id=N'd0370c2e-6fae-4717-8726-8f481a3b47f1', @delete_unused_schedule=1
GO

Make sure you change your code to use the job_name:

/****** Object:  Job [SSIS_Framework_Demand_Load_Full]    Script Date: 07/11/2016 15:49:17 ******/
IF  EXISTS (SELECT job_id FROM msdb.dbo.sysjobs_view WHERE name = N'SSIS_Framework_Demand_Load_Full')
EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_delete_job @job_name=N'SSIS_Framework_Demand_Load_Full', @delete_unused_schedule=1
GO

Good luck!