Enterprise Manager: Bug intoduced in SP4?

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Enterprise Manager: Bug intoduced in SP4?

rstone

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August 11, 2005 at 4:55 pm

#94407

Hi,
One of our developers reported that they could not see data in a varchar field, using EM with SQL Server 2000 SP4, if the data length was greater than 900. The field will appear empty. If you try to edit the "missing" field, an error message "Cannot edit this cell" will pop up. In the same display, those records which have a length less than 900 can be both seen and edited.
When I used EM with SQL Server 2000 SP3a, I did not have this problem. Then I installed SP4. I now have the same problem.
Anybody understand this? Bug?
Randy
County of Marin
RandyHelpdesk: Perhaps Im not the only one that does not know what you are doing. 😉

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Lowell SSC Guru Points: 323504 More actions · Answer 1

EM is not a catch all edit all editor; it does a good job on many things, but not all things.

making a grid that could allow the editing of a varchar(8000) field, along with all the other columns in the table would be resource consuming, to say the least....imagine a million row table with a varchar(8000) field that would be immediately editable....it'd take at least a gig of ram just to display and render it.

as a result, some items are jsut plain not editable in EM; if you need to update a big varchar, create a quick app to do it yourself, and make sure you limit your results to a size a normal machine can accomodate.

Lowell

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Peter Kryszak SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4368 More actions · Answer 2

I have SP4 on my desktop but SP3 on the server and don't see a problem like this. I used a select * where length(column)>900 to find rows like this. So it may be a server side problem.

Try selecting the column with SUBSTR(column,1,900) or SUBSTR(column,1,899), etc. See what happens.

Is there anything special about your data: non-printing characters, etc.?

I often use EM as a quick and dirty data editor, but I have to agree with Lowell that it is not the best solution.

rstone SSCertifiable Points: 6209 More actions · Answer 3

The data displays when I use LEFT(col, 800). I thought about special characters, but using LEFT on the same data enables it to display. In any case, why would they be treated differently in SP4?

The effect is the same from using EM on the server and in different databases. It only changed after SP4 was applied on the client. The server OS is Windows Server 2003. The two clients I tested are Windows 2000.

I'd rather this be a bug than a new "feature". If nobody else has this problem, then I'll try to figure out what we're doing wrong.

As to EM, EM can do a lot of things that are not safe - with power comes responsibility. We are not ready to impose a scripts only policy in development. Our developers rarely get into too much trouble. Production is another matter.

RandyHelpdesk: Perhaps Im not the only one that does not know what you are doing. 😉

Terrie Ten Centuries Points: 1353 More actions · Answer 4

I got the same behavior using EM on a server with SP4 applied. Using EM (SP3a) from a client workstation displays just fine.

rstone SSCertifiable Points: 6209 More actions · Answer 5

Thanks. It's nice to know it's not just me - this time.

I also noticed that a DTS package I saved from a client with SP4 would not open or run from a server with SP3. This problem was resolved this morning when SP4 was applied to the server.

RandyHelpdesk: Perhaps Im not the only one that does not know what you are doing. 😉