How to NOT trap errors in a stored procedure

By Chris Miller on 1 December 2001 | Tags: Stored Procedures


I was trying to track down an error in one of our internal OLAP collection processes, when I noticed something very peculiar: An insert was failing, appeared to have the proper error trapping, but was not causing an error. How does that work?

Let's say you've got a batch that looks like this:


declare @err int,
@RC int


set @err = 0
set @rc = 0

insert into BigTable
select * from ImportTable

set @RC = @@ROWCOUNT
set @err = @@ERROR

if @@ERROR <> 0
begin
rollback transaction
print 'Transaction Failed'
end

So, what is the value of @err if the INSERT fails? It's the same as the value if the INSERT works. @@ERROR and @@ROWCOUNT are only valid for the statement which executed immediately previous to the use of the variable. So, the @@ERROR was quite unhelpfully trapping any errors which resulted from the assignment of @@ROWCOUNT to @RC. Not exactly as intended. The correct way of writing it is to use SELECT, like this:

select @RC = @@ROWCOUNT, @err = @@ERROR




-rs


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