Unable to save database snapshot

mystique

I am having trouble saving a database snapshot from the Tools->Create Database Snapshot menu option. The "register database" step completes successfully but after I have selected a filename and have clicked save, the following message appears:

"Unable to save database snapshot- Found a high surrogate char without a following low surrogate at index: 1. The input may not be in this encoding, or may not contain valid Unicode (UTF-16) characters. Parameter name: chars"

There are virtually no options to select in this process so I am unsure where to start looking for a solution. The snapshot file is partially created but is invalid/incomplete. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Paul

Brian Donahue

Hello Paul,

This sounds like a serialization error in .NET Framework. I recall that we did have this problem, most likely caused by Extended Properties with binary data in them. Can you please meke sure you have the latest version of SQL Compare: I believe we had fixed this problem?

Thanks.

mystique

Hi Brian,

Thanks for your reply. According to the "Check For Updates" function, I am using the latest version of SQL Compare (the about box says 5.2.0.32).

Is there a way to omit extended properties from a database snapshot? In my particular project, they aren't essential - mostly layout properties from the SQL Management Studio.

Thanks.

Brian Donahue

Hi,

Unfortunately not. snapshots must include all of the schema to keep the dependency information available.

If you want, you can send us the database backup and we can look into it. SQL Compare has nothing in the way of logging that will troubleshoot why this happens, and we'd need to run a snapshot of your database with SQL Compare on the debugger.

mystique

Hi Brian,

As your previous post indicated that it may be a problem with extended properties, I replicated the database without stored procedures (using SQL Compare) and it does, now, save the snapshot of the version without extended properties.

However, it would be useful to be able to take snapshots of this database without going through that drill each time as I have multiple database variations that I'm trying to keep track of and I want to use the snapshots for versioning.

So, if you are willing to look at a database backup, please let me know where I can send it and I will get it to you.

Brian Donahue

Hi,

Hold on for a minute and let me check the bugs database and re-open it if it's in there. I think it should be easy to reproduce. This has been fixed in Data Compare, but I'm not sure about SQL Compare, although I'm fairly certain I did log an issue about it an aeon ago.

Brian Donahue

I have logged an issue with Development about this. With any luck the update will make it into version 5.3.