August 28, 2013 at 8:14 am
Hi
I run the same query against two DB, one is the publisher and other is the subscriber.
The two DB should be identical but the subscriber raise the "Divide By Zero" error while the publisher return the correct result.
Of course.... NONE OF THE RETURNED ROWS HAVE A ZERO in the relevant fields!!!
[w00t]
This is the query
SELECT
CASE
WHEN
BAL_IN.FK_CURR = 'EUR' then 1.0 -- If the currency is EURO the exchange rate is one
ELSE -- Otherwise calculate it.
BAL_IN.LEDGER_BAL_ORG_AMT/ BAL_IN.AC_FUNC_AMT -- HERE RAISE THE DIVIDE BY ZERO ERROR
END AS Exchange_Rate ,
CASE
WHEN
BAL_IN.FK_CURR = 'EUR' THEN DET_IN.DTL_AMT
ELSE
DET_IN.DTL_AMT/(BAL_IN.LEDGER_BAL_ORG_AMT/BAL_IN.AC_FUNC_AMT) -- This statement is similar but DO NOT Raise the Error(!!?)
END AS Exchanged_amount,
BAL_IN.AC_FUNC_AMT ,
BAL_IN.LEDGER_BAL_ORG_AMT,
DET_IN.DTL_AMT,
FROM
SICSNTPC.AC_LEDGER_DETAIL AS DET_IN ,
SICSNTPC.AC_LEDGER_BALANCE AS BAL_IN
WHERE
Where conditions......
I've found a kind of bypass using this statement
WHEN (ABS(BAL_IN.AC_FUNC_AMT)) <> 0 then ABS(BAL_IN.LEDGER_BAL_ORG_AMT)/ ABS(BAL_IN.AC_FUNC_AMT)
The problem has appeared lately but I can't imagine the origin of that.
Someone has ideas of what could be the reason of this disconcerting behaviour ?
Many thanks for the help
[Smile]
Giuliano
PS: Copied from a post on Replication forum because the subject is more related to the programming
August 29, 2013 at 3:12 pm
A possible reason for this error is that the division expressions are being evaluated for some rows before those rows are excluded by the WHERE clause. The same problem is often observed when CASTing datatypes, and using a WHERE clause to filter only those rows where the CAST would succeed.
This can happen because the optimiser is free to evaluate your SELECT expressions either before or after filtering by the WHERE clause. Even if the data in your two databases is the same, other factors (indexing, server resources...) may affect the optimser.
Your solution of rewriting the expression is probably the best way, since it is tricky (impossible??) to be sure what the optimiser will do.
More info:
T-SQL functions do no imply a certain order of execution[/url]
August 31, 2013 at 4:24 am
Hi John
I think you got the target! 🙂
A possible reason for this error is that the division expressions are being evaluated
for some rows before those rows are excluded by the WHERE clause.
I've searched in the table if there are rows where this field is Zero and, surprise surprise, there are some!!
There should not be zero values there but there are !! :angry:
A curiosity : In my case this strange behaviour helps to find a potential data issue but speaking in general term
shouldn't it be considered an error of the DB Engine ?
Many thanks for the kind help
🙂
September 1, 2013 at 3:24 pm
Hi
A curiosity : In my case this strange behaviour helps to find a potential data issue but speaking in general term shouldn't it be considered an error of the DB Engine ?
That's exactly what I thought when I first came across this a few years ago! However, SQL is designed as a declarative language so that the statements you write only really define what data you want to manipulate, but intentionally do not define HOW the database should do it.
This has huge advantages in terms of optimisation, but means that you cannot make any assumptions about the order of execution of the logic of your statements.
This 'undefined behaviour' even goes so far that you cannot rely on an expression like (a = b) and (c = d) being evaluated left to right and short-circuited. If you must define the order of evaluation, the normal approach is using CASE (as you did)
SELECT * FROM t
WHERE (a<>0) and (b/a=2) -- Might fail with divide by zero
-- could be rewritten as
SELECT * FROM t
WHERE (CASE WHEN a<>0 THEN b/a ELSE null END) = 2
Best description of this I've found is in the Short Circuit article by Itzik Ben-Gan (whose stuff is always worth reading).
September 2, 2013 at 6:25 am
Hi John
I've read the article you mentioned and it helps to clarify the matter..... really the author talks about the order of the evaluation of the CASE statement and never mention that the CASE in the SELECT is evaluated before the WHERE condition is applied.
But, as told before, to me is sufficient that some of the denominators are zero to indicate that the data are not correct, so I will correct the data anyway.
Many thanks for your precious help.
Have a nice day!
🙂
September 6, 2013 at 7:07 am
btw, wouldn't it be better writing your example query more like :
SELECT * FROM t
WHERE (a<>0) and (b= 2 * a)
?
It will avoid the "CASE" term
September 8, 2013 at 4:08 pm
odepriester (9/6/2013)
btw, wouldn't it be better writing your example query more like :
SELECT * FROM t
WHERE (a<>0) and (b= 2 * a)
?
It will avoid the "CASE" term
Sometimes a rewrite like that would work, but if 'a=2' and 'b=5' are integers, then
b/a = 2
but
b <> 2*a
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