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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T17:11:14+00:00

I understand that the Cannot sort a row of size 9754, which is greater

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I understand that the “Cannot sort a row of size 9754, which is greater than the allowable maximum of 8094.” from SQL server is caused by a row that has over 9k characters in it, which is greater than the page size limit in SQL Server 7. But I’m not calling an order by on the data below, so why does the error say it cannot sort? 

SELECT <a number of columns...>
FROM Category10Master c10
JOIN Category20Master c20 ON c10.Cat10ID = c20.ParentCatID 
JOIN Category25Master c25 ON c20.Cat20ID = c25.ParentCatID 
JOIN Category30Master c30 ON c25.Cat25ID = c30 .ParentCatID 
JOIN Item i ON c30.Cat30ID = i.ParentCatID

EDIT: And yes, I know I can call fewer columns to solve this – the actual query calls the columns needed explicitly and still exceeds the row size limit. This is actually in a view that’s called site-wide so changing the view to pull back fewer columns isn’t an attractive option – dozens of pages would need to be modified to get their data from somewhere other than the view. I’m unlucky enough to have interhited an ugly design and am hoping someone has a more attractive solution than pulling less data.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Check the estimated query plan for the sort, to perform one of the joins it may be choosing a merge join for example, and to achieve this it requires the data to be sorted first prior to the merge – at that point you’ve sorted.

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