More useful error messages

Carl M

Hi,

When I am trying to pacakge a db it gets to Generating SQL script, then falls over saying "Value cannot be null. Parameter name format".

According to Profiler, the last thing Pacakger was doing was selecting from a table. The table has no data in it, and no referencet to "format" anywhere, so the error means absoultely nothing to me. If we could get some meaningful messages that would be great.

Brian Donahue

Hi Carl,

SQL Packager tries to catch as many known exception types as it can and tries to construct helpful error messages. Unfortunately, what you are seeing is a software bug, probably caused when trying to create a data script for a table that has a large object and no primary key. SQL Packager should support this, at least when creating a new database package or adding a new table to an existing database.

The only workaround I know of at this time would be to choose one or more columns that can be used to uniquely identify rows of data and create a primary key or unique index or constraint on those column(s).

This query should help you identify the tables that need modification:

SELECT O.[NAME] as [Table name], C.[NAME] as [Column Name] 
FROM SYSOBJECTS O 
JOIN SYSCOLUMNS C 
 ON C.ID = O.ID 
WHERE O.XTYPE = 'U' 
 AND C.XTYPE in (34,35,99) /*IMAGE,TEXT,NTEXT*/
 and O.name !='dtproperties' 
ORDER BY O.[NAME], C.[NAME]

PSU

Hi Carl

Has this software bug been fixed yet?

Thanks