String or binary data would be truncated -- Heisenberg problem

Posted by harpo on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by harpo
Published on 2010-03-11T22:01:55Z Indexed on 2010/03/12 4:57 UTC
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When you get this error, the first thing you ask is, which column? Unfortunately, SQL Server is no help here. So you start doing trial and error. Well, right now I have a statement like:

INSERT tbl (A, B, C, D, E, F, G)
SELECT A, B * 2, C, D, E, q.F, G
  FROM tbl
      ,othertable q
 WHERE etc etc

Note that

  • Some values are modified or linked in from another table, but most values are coming from the original table, so they can't really cause truncation going back to the same field (that I know of).
  • Eliminating fields one at a time eventually makes the error go away, if I do it cumulatively, but — and here's the kicker — it doesn't matter which fields I eliminate. It's as if SQL Server is objecting to the total length of the row, which I doubt, since there are only about 40 fields in all, and nothing large.

Anyone ever seen this before?

Thanks.

UPDATE: I have also done "horizontal" testing, by filtering out the SELECT, with much the same result. In other words, if I say

  • WHERE id BETWEEN 1 AND 100: Error
  • WHERE id BETWEEN 1 AND 50: No error
  • WHERE id BETWEEN 50 AND 100: No error

I tried many combinations, and it cannot be limited to a single row.

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