problem querying system tables

  • I was using code similar to what appears below to extract the text of stored procedures and UDFs, and it was working perfectly until earlier today. Since making some minor changes (re-arranging the order of the fields in the SELECT clause and adding one new field there), it no longer works properly - the [text] field is now truncated after 330 characters - until this morning, the entire field (up to 4000 characters) was always displayed. What am I doing wrong?

    SELECT O.[id], C.number, C.colid, O.[name], O.xtype, O.crdate,

    ObjectType =

    CASE

    WHEN O.xtype = 'P' THEN 'Stored Procedure'

    ELSE 'Function'

    END,

    LEN(C.[text]) AS LenText, C.[text]

    FROM sysobjects AS O

    INNER JOIN syscomments AS C

    ON O.[id] = C.[id]

    WHERE (O.xtype IN ('P', 'FN', 'IF', 'TF'))

    AND (O.[name] NOT LIKE 'dt_%')

    ORDER BY ObjectType DESC, O.[name], O.[id], C.number, C.colid

  • with a copy/paste of your code, i get this error:

    Server: Msg 1540, Level 16, State 1, Line 1

    Cannot sort a row of size 8101, which is greater than the allowable maximum of 8094.

    Lowell


    --help us help you! If you post a question, make sure you include a CREATE TABLE... statement and INSERT INTO... statement into that table to give the volunteers here representative data. with your description of the problem, we can provide a tested, verifiable solution to your question! asking the question the right way gets you a tested answer the fastest way possible!

  • Hmm, that's odd. I was getting a similar error when I first started developing this code, but am not now. But it's still truncating the [text] field and I can't figure out why.

  • truncating where? in query analyzer? QA has a famous display issue with large varchar columns, it might be the default value of 256 here:

    Tools>>Options>>Results>>Maximum Characters Per Column>>change to 8000

    if you are dumping it to a recordset or datatable, it should be fine.

    Lowell


    --help us help you! If you post a question, make sure you include a CREATE TABLE... statement and INSERT INTO... statement into that table to give the volunteers here representative data. with your description of the problem, we can provide a tested, verifiable solution to your question! asking the question the right way gets you a tested answer the fastest way possible!

  • I fixed the truncation in QA by changing the appropriate setting there. But I'm using the same code in a stored procedure called by a DTS package. The DTS package has a single data transformation task, which uses a local database connection as its source object and a plain text file as its destination object. The task simply copies all of the fields generated by the stored procedure (which consists of the T-SQL code I included here) to the text file. It runs without error, except that the field C.[text] is truncated at 330 characters. When I change the stored procedure and DTS package so that the output goes to a newly created SQL table rather than a text file, no truncation occurs. I may just stick with that, since I was just advised that all subsequent processing must be done within SQL Server, so there's no longer any reason to generate a text file. But I'd sure like to know why the text file generation worked yesterday but does not work today.

  • The problem is that c.Text is an NVARCHAR column of 4000... don't forget that this is UniCode and contains 2 bytes per visible character so it's really 8k if the LEN is 4k.  Take a look at the code below which "fixes" this problem... also note the OBJECTPROPERTY line to ignore objects that Microsoft incorrectly identifies as "user" objects... I also added a DATALENGTH column so you can see what the real length of c.Text is...

     SELECT o.[ID],

            c.Number,

            c.ColID,

            o.[Name],

            o.XType,

            o.CrDate,

            ObjectType = CASE

                           WHEN o.XType = 'P' THEN 'Stored Procedure'

                           ELSE 'Function'

                         END,

            LenText    = LEN(c.[Text]),

            LenReal    = DATALENGTH(c.[Text]),

            [Text]     = CAST(c.[Text] AS VARCHAR(4000))

       FROM dbo.SysObjects o

      INNER JOIN dbo.SysComments c

         ON o.[ID] = c.[ID]

      WHERE o.XType IN ('P', 'FN', 'IF', 'TF')

        AND OBJECTPROPERTY(o.ID,'IsMsShipped') = 0

      ORDER BY  ObjectType DESC,

                o.[Name],

                o.[ID],

                c.Number,

                c.ColID

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Thanks, Jeff!

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