Question

I’m working in a client’s SQL Server 2005 database and I’m seeing some odd behavior. I have a little experience with 2008, but this is my first battle with 2005, so I’m hoping this turns out to be something simple related to my inexperience.

What am I trying to do? I am developing a sales dashboard in SSRS 2005. One of the report parameters is a multi-value parameter which I need to pass to a stored procedure. I found a work around in some blogs, as well as here on SO, and implemented a function which splits a comma delimited varchar, and returns a table. I need this function to return the correct values from within the procedure, since I am calling stored procedures for the SSRS datasets.

My Problem: When I execute the function directly from within SSMS for a given value, I receive a table with 7 rows (as expected). When I execute a procedure that calls that function, with the same values passed, it only returns 1 row in the table. The user executing the function and the procedure is also the owner of both objects.

I’ve done a lot of homework to get to this point prior to posting the question, so I hope I’ve done my due diligence here. The client hasn’t given me privileges to work with SQL Profiler, so I haven’t been able to dig in that direction.

I thought perhaps this could be a permissions issue, but the fact that the function is still executed and does return 1 row instead of 7 confused me. It appears to only return the first number from the comma dilimitted string.

My Question: What the heck is causing the behavior outlined below? Please let me know if I should provide any additional information.

Executed from SSMS:

declare 

    @SiteID varchar(max);

    set @SiteID = '1,2,3,4,5,6,7';

BEGIN

exec usp_function_test @SiteID;

select * from udf_rpt_multivalueparamtotable(@SiteID,',',1)

END

Output from Procedure:

Val
---
1

Output from select statement:

Val
---
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

Function Code:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[udf_RPT_MultiValueParamToTAble](
            @String VARCHAR(max), /* input string */
   @Delimeter char(1),   /* delimiter */
   @TrimSpace bit )      /* kill whitespace? */
RETURNS @Table TABLE ( [Val] VARCHAR(4000) )
AS

BEGIN
    DECLARE @Val    VARCHAR(4000)
    WHILE LEN(@String) > 0
    BEGIN
        SET @Val    = LEFT(@String,
             ISNULL(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(@Delimeter, @String) - 1, -1),
             LEN(@String)))
        SET @String = SUBSTRING(@String,
             ISNULL(NULLIF(CHARINDEX(@Delimeter, @String), 0),
             LEN(@String)) + 1, LEN(@String))
  IF @TrimSpace = 1 Set @Val = LTRIM(RTRIM(@Val))
    INSERT INTO @Table ( [Val] )
        VALUES ( @Val )
    END
    RETURN
END

Test Procedure Code:

CREATE PROCEDURE usp_function_test (@SiteID varchar)
AS

SET NOCOUNT ON

BEGIN

select * from udf_rpt_multivalueparamtotable(@SiteID,',',1)

END

Answer 1

Try defining a scale for the SP parameter –

CREATE PROCEDURE usp_function_test (@SiteID varchar(max))

When you declare a varchar parameter without a scale, it defaults to a scale of 1 – your input value was being silently truncated.

Reference here – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176089.aspx