Access ADO Form Insert Bug

[Pete Nurse]

I have a bound subform (employee) which linked to the parent form
(company) by the argument to the subform's SQL Server stored procedure
(SP). The UniqueTable property is set to "tblEmployee".

Depending on the complexity of the SP (more of which later), after I
insert a record I get the following message...

"Key value for this row was changed or deleted at the data store. The
local row is now deleted" and then Still on the new record - all the
fields change to #Deleted. Then the message "Multiple-step operation
generated errors. Check each status value" appears.

I can only release myself from this situation by closing the form, the
"Multiple-step..." error appear many times followed by "Another user or
application has deleted this record or changed the value of its primary
key".

On return to the form the new employee record is there in all its
beauty. I therefore conclude that there was actually nothing wrong
with the new record.

As I hinted, the problem seems to be related to the complexity of the
SP eg "SELECT Coy.*, Emp.*..." causes the above errors but "SELECT *
FROM ..." doesn't(!). I don't want to chase that particular art down
the drainpipe, though, because I'm looking for a solution in which I
can any valid SP code.

That's not all though...

....If I dumb down the design of the SP enough to enable me to insert a
new employee record, an entirely unrelated employee record (ie an
employee from another company) appears in the subform (!!). After I
refresh the subform, the rogue record disappears and the newly added
record appears.

Does anyone know what's going on here?

 

[aaron.kempf]

i'll try to look into this later

i'd start with the basics:

a) do you have triggers
b) have you run SQL profiler or sp_who2 to see what else is hitting
this table

 

[Pete Nurse]

Thanks Aaron,

In answer:-

a) relevant triggers are disabled.
b) I'm the only user. There are no background routines running.

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

1- Make sure that you have a primary key. It's not a bad idea to have
primary keys constitued of single field as I had trouble in the past with
composite primary keys.

2- Create a Resync command. This is probably the best way for solving your
problem.

In some case, a dummy Resync command (which is simply the name of a SP
without the right number of parameters) might be a good choice; as this will
force Access to use the default behavior of ADO, which is simply to return
the same values without requiring SQL-Server.

3- As suggested in the other post, take a look at what Access is doing by
using the SQL-Server Profiler; as this is the only practical way of
determining what Access is trying to do and finding how to compensate for
its limitations.

 

[Pete Nurse]

Sylvain, thanks for the response.

1/ Yes, I use a single field primary key of type INT with identity set
(ie autonumber).

2/ As you suggest, I've tried entering a dummy Resynch command and it
seemed to overcome the reported problem, though I don't see how I can
enter "a SP
without the right number of parameters" without receiving an error. In
fact, it seems that entering a non-existent, nonsense SP name works
just as well (ie you get an error message). Could you please explain
how I can overcome that.

I tried entering the Resynch command as recommended at . . .

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...ry/en-us/ado270/htm/mdprodynresynccommand.asp

It seemed to work sometimes but not always. Certainly not as well
(apart from the error message) as the dummy SP idea.

3/ I had a look at Profiler, but it's pretty arcane - I have no idea
what I'm looking at.

Thanks for your response - maybe we're homing in on the solution.

 

[Malcolm Cook]

Peter,

Some questions that may generate more heat:

1 How are you passing the company id to the subform's sp?
2 What is the param list to the sp?
3 What is the complete text of the sp, both the one that gives errors and the one that does not?
4 Do you have 'Link Child Fields' and 'Link master Fields' set on the parent's subform object?
5 Do you have 'Input Parameters' set on the subform.Form object?
6 What were the exact values you tried as the 'Resync Command' and what was the exact behavior that resulted (per Syvain's line
of thought

 

[aaron.kempf]

you know that if your sproc is looking for a parameter @txtPLU if you
have a control named 'txtPLU' it will automatically fill it in?

i think that this is undocumented; but i love this feature enough that
I'm still madly in love with ADP 5 years after it came out.

 

[Malcolm Cook]

i do know having stumled upon it some time ago - thanks - yeah, it is a great feature

 

[Pete Nurse]

Thanks Malcolm.
Generally by setting the recordsource eg "EXEC spEmployee 23554" but I
have also tried setting the InputParameters property. This problem
seems to show up in both instances.
I work in two different ways. Where I had an SP which I wanted to use
for several different situations, I pass a string like 'empID=2435' or
'coyID=436'. The SP then decodes the prefix and acts accordingly.
Otherwise, I just pass the ID as shown above.
These two seem to work...
SELECT *
FROM dbo.tblBenefitType BT RIGHT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblEmployee E ON BT.btID = E.emp_btID LEFT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblCompany E ON E.emp_coyID = C.coyID
WHERE (emp_coyID = @coyID)

SELECT E.*, BT.*
FROM dbo.tblBenefitType BT RIGHT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblEmployee E ON BT.btID = E.emp_btID
WHERE (emp_coyID = @coyID)

However either of the following creates problems:-
SELECT C.*, BT.*, E.*
FROM dbo.tblBenefitType BT RIGHT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblEmployee E ON BT.btID = E.emp_btID LEFT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblCompany E ON E.emp_coyID = C.coyID
WHERE (emp_coyID = @coyID)

SELECT *
FROM dbo.tblBenefitType BT RIGHT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblEmployee E ON BT.btID = E.emp_btID LEFT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblCompany E ON E.emp_coyID = C.coyID LEFT OUTER JOIN
dbo.tblCorporation Crp ON E.emp_coyID = Crp.crpID
WHERE (emp_coyID = @coyID)
No. I've never found that that works with SPs.
I've tried it. See 1.
I tried "spDummy" with no parameter. Code below.

ALTER PROCEDURE spDummy @Prm1 VARCHAR(50)
As
PRINT @Prm1

Thanks again.

 

[Pete Nurse]

You know that if your sproc is looking for a parameter @txtPLU if you
No I didn't know that. I can see that would great for combo boxes that
need to change depending on the employee or company or whatever, but
what about subforms?

In my case I have a company form based on tblCompany (between us for
the moment, let's forget about the SP) with primary key coyID with an
employee subform based on tblEmployee with PK empID and foreign key
emp_coyID which links the tblCompany.

Can it do that?

Thanks for the info - I'm not sure it solves my problem but . . .

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

Strange that a Resync command doesn't work well; as this should work in
every case.

Here an exemple of the dummy Resync command that I use:

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.DummyResync (@p1 int, @p2 int, @p3 int, @p4 int, @p5
int)
AS
SELECT @p1, @p2, @p3, @p4, @p5
GO

and I call it this way:

DummyResync ?, ?, ?, ?, ?

The article referenced in your previous post says to use the following
syntax instead:

"{call CustordersResync (?)}"

but I didn't have the time to make a full analysis of this.

For the Profiler, click on File --> New --> Trace; then give the correct
connection parameters and click OK. After that, click on Run and you should
see a basic trace showing you all the commands sent by Access.

 

[Pete Nurse]

When I use "DummyResync ?, ?, ?, ?, ?", I get the error "No value
given for one or more required parameters". When I just use
"DummyResych" (no parameters), I get no error - especially I don't get
the errors that brought me here, except . . .

.. . . remember the rogue ID problem from the original post? In the
example below empID is the autonumber employee ID and I'm entering a
new record "Craigie, Vanessa". After inserting the record, empID entry
changes from "(Autonumber)" to the rogue ID (in this case 528, it
increments for reason I don't understand - when I started this the ID
numbers were in the 400s):-
empID Last Name First Name
17853 Boon Elizabeth
17852 Evans Susan
528 Craigie Vanessa

Now, empID 528 has now been deleted and long forgotten and I'm sure SQL
Server will make sure I never use it again. BTW this rogue ID is the
parameter Access sends to the Resync Command SP (I understood enough in
SQL Profiler to see that!).

After I refresh the form, it reorders and corrects the empID:-
empID Last Name First Name
17853 Boon Elizabeth
17852 Evans Susan
30068 Craigie Vanessa

The more worrying thing is that the rogue ID may actually exist, in
which case I think it can update the wrong data (ie an employee from a
totally different company)! This I find quite scarey. I saw this
behaviour last week but it was so confused with the other insoluble
problems that I didn't follow it up.

I can work around the problem (sort of) with the following code which
immediately refreshes the form and moves the cursor to the new (empty)
record . . .
Private Sub Form_AfterInsert()
'Due to a weird bug in Access ADP (in which a completely unrelated
record is magically displayed!),
'we need to refresh then reset and then move to the bottom of the
subform:
Me.Refresh
Me.SelTop = Me.RecordsetClone.RecordCount + 1
End Sub
.. . . but that is an intellectually unacceptable way to solve the
problem.

I think this now becomes the main problem. I guess I should start
another post, but I'll see how this one flies.

Any ideas?

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

Any trigger performing any kind of insert (even in a temporary table) on the
SQL-Server side?

 

[Pete Nurse]

No triggers - I've disabled them all.

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

Your pieces of code ring an old bell: in your 1-1 relations, instead of
storing the primary ID of the unique table Employee into the foreign table
BenefitType, you are storing the primary ID of the foreign table BenefitType
into the primary table Employee. I remember having many problems with this
kind schemas under Access many years ago.

If I were you, I would try reversing this schema.

 

[Pete Nurse]

No, the relationships are all 1-many - I don't use 1-1. 12 years of
experience designing databases makes me pretty sure the structure is
correct.

 

[Sylvain Lafontaine]

I didn't say that your structure was incorrect but that I've seen in the
past the multi-step updating feature of Access having trouble with updating
some kind schemas.

Are you sure that when you make an insert in the table tblEmploye, new
records don't get created into one of the other tables such as
tblBenefitType, tblCompany or tblCorporation? Is it possible that the rogue
ID could come from one of these three other tables?

Also, I took a second look at your original post and you say that the table
tblEmploye is the subform and the table tblCompany the main form. However,
in your requests, you are extracting the fields of the associated table
tblCompany with a Left Outer Join. I don't see the usefulness of this as
only one associated company can be displayed at the same time in the main
form. In fact, I don't understand at all the use of a Left Outer Join here
instead of a regular Inner Join.

From your first and third exemple, Access seems to make a difference between
« SELECT C.*, BT.*, E.* » and « SELECT * ». What happens if you write down
explicitely all the fields?

Finally, which version of Access are you using? I hope it's not A2000.

 

[Pete Nurse]

Thanks for sticking with me, Sylvain. Quick answers to your questions.

I'm using Access 2003. Records aren't being created in other tables.
I used "Left Outer Join" so I would display the employee even if the
employee didn't have a benefit type. I didn't try further varying the
SQL because I'm prepared to mark that solved thanks to you and the the
Resync Command (though why it works I'd love to know).

My bigger (let's face it my biggest) concern now is the rogue ID
problem. I created a brand new ADP file containing only tables,
inserted new records into a couple of tables and (depending on the
table) one of three things happened:-
1/ The record added as you would expect (just like DAO);
2/ I got the message "The data was added to the database but the data
won't be dispalyed in the form because it doesn't satisfy the criteria
for the underlying recordsource"
3/ Our old friend the rogue ID appeared and (this is the cruncher) if,
after the rogue ID appears, you enter data into the record the real
record with that same ID updates!

So no forms, VBA code or SPs and the problem still exists. This
problem is of too much concern to be buried deep in this current
thread. I'd appreciate it if you could follow me to the new thread at
microsoft.public.access.adp.sqlserver where I'll include more info.

 

[Pete Nurse]

I have now convinced myself that the rogue ID problem is SQL Server not
Access (I reproduced the behaviour in Enterprise Manager), so I won't
pursue it on the newsgroup. I'll pick it up at
microsoft.public.sqlserver.