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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T11:37:16+00:00

So I have a stored procedure in SQL Server. I’ve simplified its code (for

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So I have a stored procedure in SQL Server. I’ve simplified its code (for this question) to just this:

CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.DimensionLookup as
BEGIN
select DimensionID, DimensionField from DimensionTable
inner join Reference on Reference.ID = DimensionTable.ReferenceID
END

In SSIS on SQL Server 2012, I have a Lookup component with the following source command:

EXECUTE dbo.DimensionLookup WITH RESULT SETS (
(DimensionID int,  DimensionField nvarchar(700) )
)

When I run this procedure in Preview mode in BIDS, it returns the two columns correctly. When I run the package in BIDS, it runs correctly.

But when I deploy it out to the SSIS catalog (the same server the database is on), point it to the same data sources, etc. – it fails with the message:

EXECUTE statement failed because its WITH RESULT SETS clause specified 2 column(s) for result set number 1, but the statement sent
3 column(s) at run time.

Steps Tried So Far:

Adding a third column to the result set – I get a different error, VS_NEEDSNEWMETADATA – which makes sense, kind of proof there’s no third column.

SQL Profiler – I see this:

exec sp_prepare @p1 output,NULL,N'EXECUTE dbo.DimensionLookup WITH RESULT SETS ((
DimensionID int,  DimensionField nvarchar(700)))',1
SET FMTONLY ON exec sp_execute 1 SET FMTONLY OFF

So it’s trying to use FMTONLY to get the result set data … needless to say, running SET FMTONLY ON and then running the command in SSMS myself yields .. just the two columns.

SET NOTCOUNT ON – Nothing changed.

So, two other interesting things:

  1. I deployed it out to my local SQL 2012 install and it worked fine, same connections, etc. So it may be a server / database configuration. Not sure what if anything it is, I didn’t install the dev server and my own install was pretty much click through vanilla.

    1. Perhaps the most interesting thing. If I remove the join from the procedure’s statement so it just becomes

    select DimensionID, DimensionField from DimensionTable

It goes back to just sending 2 columns in the result set! So adding a join, without adding any additional output columns, ups the result set to 3 columns. Even if I add 6 more joins, just 3 columns. So one guess is its some sort of metadata column that only gets activated when there’s a join.

Anyway, as you can imagine, it’s driving me kind of mad. I have a workaround to load the data into a temp table and just return that, but why won’t this work? What extra column is being sent back? Why only when I add a join?

Gah!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    So all credit to billinkc: The reason is because of a patch.

    In Version 11.0.2100.60, SSIS Lookup SQL command metadata is gathered using the old SET FMTONLY method. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work in 2012, as the Books Online entry on SET FMTONLY helpfully notes:

    Do not use this feature. This feature has been replaced by sp_describe_first_result_set.

    Too bad they didn’t follow their own advice!

    This has been patched as of version 11.0.2218.0. Metadata is correctly gathered using the sp_describe_first_result_set system stored procedure.

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