FireDAC (FDQuery) - database with dot in it's name

Question

I have got this problem with FireDAC -> FDQuery component when it tries to select data from a database with '.' (dot) in its name.

The database name is TEST_2.0 and the error on Opening the dataset says:

Could not find server 'TEST_2' in sys.servers [...]

I have tried {TEST_2.0} (curly brackets) and [TEST_2.0] (square brackets). Also setting QuotedIdentifiers (Format Opetions) property to True does not seem to fix the problem. In SQL query I can add 'SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON;' but this breaks inserts to the dataset.

The FDConnection component can connect to that server and that database using MSSQL driver without problems. It seems it is the dataset that dosn't handle it. UniDAC seems to handle everything without any problems.

I am using RadStudio 10.2.

Has anyone found any solution to this? Thanks in advance for any replies

Answer 1

I got a response from Emarcadero and it works for me:

"The problem is not in FireDAC, but in SQL Server ODBC driver SQLPrimaryKeys function. It fails to work with a catalog name containing a dot. FireDAC uses this function to get primary key fields for a result set, when fiMeta is included into FetchOptions.Items. So, as a workaround / solution, please exclude fiMeta from FetchOptions.Items."

Answer 2

What is wrong?

I was able to reproduce what you've described here. I've ended up on metainformation command, specifically the SQLPrimaryKeys ODBC function call. I have used SQL Server Native Client 11.0 driver connected to Microsoft SQL Server Express 12.0.2000.8, local database server instance.

When I tried to execute the following SQL command (with TEST_2.0 database created) through a TFDQuery component instance with default settings (linked connection object was left with empty database connection parameter) in Delphi Tokyo application:

SELECT * FROM [TEST_2.0].INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES

I got this exception raised when the SQLPrimaryKeys function was called with the CatalogName parameter set to TEST_2.0 (from within the metainformation statement method Execute):

[FireDAC][Phys][ODBC][Microsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]Could not find server 'TEST_2' in sys.servers. Verify that the correct server name was specified. If necessary, execute the stored procedure sp_addlinkedserver to add the server to sys.servers.'.

My next attempt was naturally modifying that CatalogName parameter value to [TEST_2.0] whilst debugging, but even that failed with similar reason (just failed for the name [TEST_2), so for me it seems that the SQLPrimaryKeys ODBC function implementation with the driver I've used cannot properly handle dotted CatalogName parameter values (it seems to ignore everything after dot).

What can I do?

The only solution seems to be just fixing ODBC drivers. Workaround I would suggest is not using dots in database names (as discussed e.g. in this thread). Another might be preventing FireDAC from getting dataset object metadata (by excluding fiMeta option from the Items option set). That will bring you the responsability of supplying dataset object metadata by yourself (at this time only primary key definition).