Question

I keep getting a max recursion error with this query.

At first I thought it was because a null was being returned and then it would try and match the null values causing the error however, I rewrote my query so nulls aren’t returned and the error still occurs.

What would be the best way to rewrite this function, so that the error will not occur

WITH EmployeeTree AS
(
    SELECT 
        EMP_SRC_ID_NR Id, USR_ACV_DIR_ID_TE Uuid, 
        CASE Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID 
           WHEN Null THEN '0' 
           ELSE Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID 
        END as  ApprovalManagerId 
    FROM 
        dbo.[tEmployees] as Employees WITH (NOLOCK)
    WHERE 
        APV_MGR_EMP_ID = @Id 
        and Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID is not null 
        and Employees.EMP_SRC_ID_NR is not null  

    UNION ALL

    SELECT 
        EMP_SRC_ID_NR Id, USR_ACV_DIR_ID_TE Uuid, 
        CASE Employees.UPS_ACP_EMP_NR 
           WHEN Null THEN '1' 
           ELSE Employees.UPS_ACP_EMP_NR 
        END as ApprovalManagerId 
    FROM 
        dbo.[tEmployees] as Employees WITH (NOLOCK)
    WHERE 
        UPS_ACP_EMP_NR = @Id 
        and Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID is not null 
        and Employees.EMP_SRC_ID_NR is not null  

    UNION ALL

    SELECT 
        Employees.EMP_SRC_ID_NR, Employees.USR_ACV_DIR_ID_TE, 
        CASE Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID 
            WHEN Null THEN '2' 
            ELSE Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID 
        END  
    FROM 
        dbo.[tEmployees] as Employees WITH (NOLOCK)
    JOIN 
        EmployeeTree ON Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID = EmployeeTree.Id 
    where  
        Employees.APV_MGR_EMP_ID is not null 
        and Employees.EMP_SRC_ID_NR is not null             
)
SELECT 
    Id AS [EmployeeId], 
    Uuid AS [EmployeeUuid], 
    ApprovalManagerId AS [ManagerId] 
FROM EmployeeTree        

Answer 1

Specify the maxrecursion option at the end of the query:

...
from EmployeeTree
option (maxrecursion 0)

That allows you to specify how often the CTE can recurse before generating an error. Maxrecursion 0 allows infinite recursion.