Puzzling Primary Key Problem

Hi,

I wonder if anybody encountered before with tables which has records with some of the primary keys as null values?

Currently I've found a number of records which isn't suppose to be inserted in the first place from a table.

My table size is over a few millions and currently using SQL Server Standard version

Seems like the primary key got corrupted or something...

Anybody encountered this before??

-deb-If the primary key of the table is autogenerated then you can use

DBCC CHECKIDENT

for Checking the current identity value for the specified table and, if needed, corrects the identity value.|||Thanks but I don't think that's the case because it happens to a non identity column.
By Default even before inserting it SQL Server should have prompted a Primary Key Violation Error but in this case it doesn't and proceed to insert the value into the column as null.|||Can you execute a DBCC Checktable statement on the table and verify the results.|||Will try and see and let you know as the db is at customer's site.
Thanks
:)|||do the users provide their own values for example could they press the spacebar or does your front end add characters using a ascii function like char(xx)

here is what [BOL] has to say on the matter

"When a PRIMARY KEY constraint is added to an existing column or columns in the table, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 checks the existing data in the columns to ensure that the existing data follows the rules for primary keys:

No null values
No duplicate values

If a PRIMARY KEY constraint is added to a column that has duplicate or null values, SQL Server returns an error and does not add the constraint. It is not possible to add a PRIMARY KEY constraint that violates these rules.
"

so i tried this

create table nulltesttable
(
nullcolumn varchar(10) not null
)

and added three rows

insert nulltesttable values (char(9))
insert nulltesttable values (char(13))
insert nulltesttable values (char(32))

then i applied the pk with nocheck and it applied as long as i didnt duplicate the ascii chars in the columns

i cant say what your issue is but if you try this query it could at least lead you to eliminate this as a problem

select Char(nullcolumn) as 'Null column'
from nulltesttable

there are a very limited ascii chars that are invisible so if you have a large # of rows that appear to be null then this is probably not your issue either way thanks for the exercise...|||Thanks... actually that was what I suspect also due to the reason the values are from barcode and sometimes the reader can return some rubbish that is not visible. There are a few records which this rubbish data.

But still I need to look for other possibilities. For my case if I were to select out using a select statement

select * from table
where column is null

It'll return records. :)

That's the very funny thing*sigh*

Originally posted by Ruprect
do the users provide their own values for example could they press the spacebar or does your front end add characters using a ascii function like char(xx)

here is what [BOL] has to say on the matter

"When a PRIMARY KEY constraint is added to an existing column or columns in the table, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 checks the existing data in the columns to ensure that the existing data follows the rules for primary keys:

No null values
No duplicate values

If a PRIMARY KEY constraint is added to a column that has duplicate or null values, SQL Server returns an error and does not add the constraint. It is not possible to add a PRIMARY KEY constraint that violates these rules.
"

so i tried this

create table nulltesttable
(
nullcolumn varchar(10) not null
)

and added three rows

insert nulltesttable values (char(9))
insert nulltesttable values (char(13))
insert nulltesttable values (char(32))

then i applied the pk with nocheck and it applied as long as i didnt duplicate the ascii chars in the columns

i cant say what your issue is but if you try this query it could at least lead you to eliminate this as a problem

select Char(nullcolumn) as 'Null column'
from nulltesttable

there are a very limited ascii chars that are invisible so if you have a large # of rows that appear to be null then this is probably not your issue either way thanks for the exercise...sql