I have a very simple query:
DROP TYPE IF EXISTS abc;
When run on my local machine, all good. When run on my production machine, it returns:
ERROR: syntax error at or near "EXISTS" at character 14
I have tried typing it manually rather than copying to make sure there is no hidden character somewhere, but I can not figure out how this can given an error at one place but not at another.
Check the versions that you're using, for both local and production.
The if exists clause was only added to drop type in 8.2.
And, before anyone questions why it complains about the exists rather than the if, it's because the statement:
drop type if
is perfectly valid up to that point, as an attempt to drop the if type. It's only the exists after that which makes the syntax bad.
Related
When I make a query in Aginity with an error in it, it gives a notification like
ERROR: '[My SQL here]'
error
^ found "INSERT" (at char 2292) expecting `SELECT' or `'(''
If I click on the location of that error in my SQL, it's actually at Position: 3934. I think Aginity is disregarding the whitespace when it tries to say where the error is. Is there a way to make it show the position in the builder?
It's not Aginity that does this, it's somewhere up the software stack (I suspect it's on the actual Netezza itself).
What I do (and this is a POOR solution) is to remove the whitespace myself.
Since I use Unix (mostly) and Vim this is a little easier than in Aginity.
It really is a PITA, and IBM should proved a better solution (one would be to kick back the SQL statement as run with all the whitespace removed).
This error 'the cursor is open' took me some hours to resolve, so I submit here the explanation in order to propose a solution for people experiencing the same problem.
Problem description : trying to get data from postgreSQL through standard function SQLEXEC raised "Syntax Error", while the same query runs correctly on PGAdmin. Morecover, subsequent queries systematically raised "The cursor is open" (each time being necessary to kill Postgres process AND to reinit the VFP connexion).
Conditions: Postgres 9.3.3, Windows XP SP2, PostgreSQL ODBC Driver(UNICODE) version 9.02.01.00, Visual FoxPro 9 SP1
Solution: SQLExec 3rd parameter should not contain a dot ("."). For example, the command SQLExec(1, 'Select 1', '.F.') raises the problem, when SQLExec(1, 'Select 1', 'F') does not.
In my case '.F.' value was generated programmatically, which made the diagnosis difficult.
That is not a VFP error bur programmer's error. The 3rd parameter is a cursor name for the result and as said in the documentation a cursor name cannot have dot. OTOH 'F' is a valid cursor name.
As per the syntax error, very likely you were trying to pass a long sql string literal over 255 characters but can't be sure as we don't see your code. In VFP it is also documented that character literals cannot exceed 255 in length.
I have the following select statement:
select * from '/MOUNT_NAME/DB_NAME/TABLE_NAME'
Where MOUNT_NAME, DB_NAME, TABLE_NAME are just what they say they are.
The above syntax works just fine in the generated SQL statement when first opening a notebook and exploring the data. However, when I type in the same thing in a SQL window created in that notebook I get the following error:
operator '(' expected; '/MOUNT_NAME/DB_NAME/TABLE_NAME'
Any suggestions? Am I misusing the Notebook behavior for writing just simple syntax? Must be doing something wrong since this seems so straightforward. Any clarification out there?
The correct query would be:
SELECT * FROM `/MOUNT_NAME/DB_NAME/TABLE_NAME`
Note the use of back-ticks (not single quotes) to escape identifiers, which changed recently when SlamData was updated to use the latest version of Quasar. It looks like not all documentation on the SlamData website has been updated yet.
I am retrieving the following sql statement from a table and then using bind variables to substitute the values in. I get a syntax error when running the statement. It seems to be occurring as a result of the lower() function however I believe I am using this correctly. I have tried running the statement manually via psql and it works fine with the values I provide. Does anyone have any ideas on this one? I have tried switching the ' for $$ but this had no effect.
statement
SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name=lower(':1')
and column_name=lower(':2')
expected basic statement with substituted values
SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name=lower('MyTableName')
and column_name=lower('MyColumnName')
statement run by postgresql
SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name=lower('((E'RWOL_TMA_ROADWORKS'))')
and column_name=lower('((E'TPHS_CWAY_RESTRICT_TYPE'))')
Error in C#
ERROR: 42601: syntax error at or near \"MyTableName\"
Error in PostgreSQL log file
2012-04-16 11:36:15 BST ERROR: syntax error at or near "RWOL_TMA_ROADWORKS" at character 80
2012-04-16 11:36:15 BST STATEMENT: SELECT column_name FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_name=lower('((E'RWOL_TMA_ROADWORKS'))') and column_name=lower('((E'TPHS_CWAY_RESTRICT_TYPE'))')
EDIT: Retrieval and implementation code is written in C#. I use the database connection base classes and the npgsql provider factory in order to make connections, run queries and retrieve the data. This method works for all other queries that use this method of binding variables etc apart from this one where I try to use the lower() function.
EDIT: I have tried removing the quotes altogether to let the binding agent deal with quoting the values and this provided the same syntax error.
EDIT: Have now enabled logging and added the actual statement that postgresql is running.
I think vyegorov is on the right path - there's something funny with your placeholders.
I don't think your second example is the actual query after substition because that doesn't contain any errors. Where did it come from and why aren't you providing the actual query - do you have statement logging turned on in PostgreSQL?
Also, I'm suspicious of the syntax error - what's going on with the escaped double-quotes? Are they actually double-quotes and not doubled-up single quotes?
Are you sure you need single-quotes around your placeholders? Usually the drivers manage that for you.
Are you sure you aren't double-quoting the values anywhere?
Get the actual SQL and look at the quoting and the problem will be obvious I suspect.
UPDATE: now have SQL
Here's the error in the posted statement:
lower('((E'RWOL_TMA_ROADWORKS'))')
You've got two levels of quotes here. Remove the ones you've added and we should end up with something like:
lower((E'RWOL_TMA_ROADWORKS'))
Ignoring the repeated brackets that's valid (The E'...' is the syntax for a c-style escaped string - google around standard_conforming_strings).
Maybe you shouldn't use quotes around :1 and :2. Most APIs that support bind variables will correctly quote the value for you.
I think that it is not lower() functions' issue, but rather bind variable processing issue.
As #Adrian suggests, try not to use quotes around your bind variables.
And you should also consult your databases logs, you'll see more information there about what's going on.
EDIT: Use:
SHOW data_directory;
SHOW log_directory;
SQL statement to find the locations of your DATA directory and logs location, if logs path is relative, then it will be relative to the DATA directory.
Go there and find the recently modified file, check the contents. You should see the error message with default PostgreSQL configuration.
And it'd be good for you to enable debugging also on the middleware / factory levels.
We are working on merging individual files into a group PostgreSQL database. The files have all been working perfectly fine on their own and when we have combined we have run them with no problems. It started to hang on the creation of one trigger, so we commented the trigger out. The next time we ran the merge file we got the following error:
ERROR: Syntax error at end of input
LINE 181: --$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql
Following this error there were subsequent syntax errors and then to our horror we found the following in our log file:
ERROR: Syntax error at end of input
LINE 181: --$$ LANGUAGE plpgsql
COMMIT
We had tests in this file that contained test data that was NOT supposed to be entered into the database, corrupting who knows how much of the data in our database. We have looked through every file included and there is no COMMIT anywhere!
Has anyone ever run into something similar? Is there any reason why an error in parsing would ever cause a commit?
If you don't have a BEGIN statement, then the PostgreSQL connection is in "autocommit" mode, committing each change after the statement is run. Since you're incorrectly commenting your code, I'd say you've commented the BEGIN statement earlier in the code. But I can't be sure because you did not provide any of your SQL.
Note that the syntax:
--$$
does not comment out the end of function $$. What it means is empty comment as the last thing inside a string. It might help you if you read the line as:
--
$$
That is why you're getting a parse error on a "commented" line. If it was actually commented, PostgreSQL would not parse it. $$ is a quote operator enclosing SQL code, and is just a convenience syntax against using ''s for quoting (which would mean you have to double-quote each quote inside the quoted SQL). What you think was a commented out line was actually just a piece of a string ending with two hyphens.
On a general note: You should use commenting only for adding descriptions to the code and not disabling sections of code. Use version control if you need to have access to older versions of the code.
Edit: Clarified explanation on quoted strings. Hope this makes more sense now.