Question

I was having fun testing out the columnstore index feature of sql server 2012. Because you can’t update/insert tables with such indices I read on some options: keep a separate table and use a new partition for every bulk insert or disable the index, perform updates/inserts and then rebuild the index.

For my test I chose the latter option and ended up with this stored procedure:

-- Disable the columnstore index.
ALTER INDEX [All_Columns_Columnstore_Index] ON [dbo].[Tick] DISABLE

-- Insert data into tick table from staging table.
insert into Tick
select [Date],
       SymbolID,
       Price
from TickTemporary

-- Delete data from staging table.
delete from TickTemporary

-- Enable (rebuild) the columnstore index.
ALTER INDEX [All_Columns_Columnstore_Index] ON [dbo].[Tick] REBUILD

If I execute these lines manually everything works fine. But if I run the procedure, I get the error that updates/inserts can’t be performed on a table that has a columnstore index.

Why is this?

Update:

I followed the advice in the answer I previously accepted but I still get the same thing.

-- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from
-- interfering with SELECT statements.
SET NOCOUNT ON;

-- Disable the columnstore index.
EXEC DisableColumnStoreIndex

-- Insert data into tick table from staging table.
insert into Tick
select [Date],
       SymbolID,
       Price
from TickTemporary

-- Delete data from staging table.
delete from TickTemporary

-- Enable (rebuild) the columnstore index.
EXEC RebuildColumnStoreIndex

Even tried placing “begin tran” and “commit tran” around the sproc calls.

Using dynamic sql like:

declare @sql nvarchar(max)
set @sql =
    'insert into Tick
     select [Date],
            SymbolID,
            Price
     from TickTemporary'
exec(@sql)

works, but really, I want to get by without dynamic sql. Isn’t it possible in this case?

Answer 1

The check is done at compile time, not at execution time. Separate the procedure into it’s own, or use dynamic SQL.

But as a general comment this is not the right approach. You should insert into a different table with identical structure, build the columnstore index on this identical table, then use partition switch to replace the old table with the new table: switch out the old table with an empty one, switch in the new table, drop the old data switched out. Similar to the procedure described in How to Update a table with a Columnstore Index. Because of the use of partition switch the users of your table experience a much shorter downtime, as the old table is still online and available during the insert and during the build columnstore stages.