Question

Can anyone tell me why this doesn’t work?

if ((select @@servername) = 'ServerA')
begin
    use DatabaseA
    select top 5 * from dbo.SignUPRequest
end
else if ((select @@servername) = 'ServerB')
begin
    use DatabaseB
    select top 5 * from dbo.SignUPRequest
end

When I run this on ServerA, I get a message that DatabaseB doesn’t exist on ServerA, which it doesnt, but I don’t understand why it’s trying to read if the second if evaluates to false.

Msg 911, Level 16, State 1, Line 8
Database ‘DatabaseB’ does not exist. Make sure that the name is entered correctly.

Answer 1

The code is parsed before it is run. When it is parsed SQL Server checks that it can access everything in the code, it cannot access the database that exists on the other server so the parsing step of running the code fails. As a result, you get the error message you’ve shown.

If you want to get around that you can put the code in the IF blocks as dynamically executed code (I always feel this is a bit of a hack/workaround).

DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000);
if ((select @@servername) = 'ServerA')
begin
    SET @sql = 'use DatabaseA; select top 5 * from dbo.SignUPRequest;'
end
else if ((select @@servername) = 'ServerB')
begin
    SET @sql = 'use DatabaseB; select top 5 * from dbo.SignUPRequest'
end

EXEC (@sql)

So, what happens here is that you defer the parsing & running of the code that uses the appropriate database for the server to run time, as that what the EXEC statement at the end does.

UPDATE

Based on the additional comment below you could also rewrite this as:

DECLARE @sql NVARCHAR(4000);
if ((select @@servername) = 'ServerA')
begin
    select top 5 * from DatabaseA.dbo.SignUPRequest;
end
else if ((select @@servername) = 'ServerB')
begin
    select top 5 * from DatabaseB.dbo.SignUPRequest;
end

So, instead of putting in a USE <database-name> at the start, you can also more fully qualify the name of the table in your select statement. If you only have one line of SQL to deal with this could be more effective.