Thursday, 4 January 2018

Table-valued user-defined functions and the database collation

When it comes to altering database collations we may face some problems that tend to slow us down at the beginning. Nevertheless, digging into the message errors we might not spot the causes easily. For instance, while executing the following script to change the collation at database level an error may arise informing that some objects depends on it and it is not possible to make that change. Here is the script.

ALTER DATABASE MyDBUser SET RESTRICTED_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE; 
ALTER DATABASE MyDBUser COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS;  
ALTER DATABASE MyDBUser SET MULTI_USER WITH ROLLBACK IMMEDIATE;

As far as we know collations are heavily linked to character columns, and it includes columns of table-valued user-defined functions as they may have character columns on its definition. When theses functions are created they inherit the database collation by design for their columns. Here the error message:

Msg 5075, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
The object 'TVFUserTable' is dependent on database collation. The database collation cannot be changed if a schema-bound object depends on it. Remove the dependencies on the database collation and then retry the operation.
Msg 5072, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
ALTER DATABASE failed. The default collation of database 'MyDBUser' cannot be set to SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS.

What we just need to do to be able to change the collation at database level is firstly drop every schema-bound objects, then make the change and finally create the objects again. That is all for now. Let me know any remarks you may have.

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HELLO, I'M PERCY REYES! I've been working as a senior SQL Server Database Engineer for over 20 years; I'm a three-time Microsoft Data Platform MVP. I'm a cryptographer conducting research on cryptographic Boolean functions and their applications.