Sql-server – Column name or number of supplied values does not match table definition error

foreign keysql servertable

I have a table, with two foreign keys defined on two columns of that table. The problem is that, when I insert the values from SQL Server, I get the following error:

Column name or number of supplied values does not match table definition

Please see the below image for the definition of the table. Can you please tell me why the value is not getting inserted?

Table Image

Best Answer

You're not showing us what you're doing - but based on the table structure, this is what you should do:

create an INSERT statement that explicitly lists the columns it will insert into - assuming that ID might be an IDENTITY column that you don't want / can't insert into
define the exact number of values to fill into these columns

So your INSERT statement should be something like:

INSERT INTO dbo.tbl_Post (cat_id, ngo_id, title, description, active)
VALUES (42, 4711, 'Some title', 'Some description', 1)

What you should definitely get in the habits of avoiding is using INSERT INTO dbo.tblPost without explicitly defining the list of column to insert into. This is just a recipe for disaster, as soon as you change your table definition, all your existing INSERTs will break since they don't match the table definition anymore.

Therefore: always explicitly define the list of columns that an INSERT statement should fill data into!

Also see Aaron Bertrand's excellent blog post on the topic:
Bad habits to kick: using SELECT * / omit the column list

Related Solutions

Sql-server – SQL Server 2000 Replication

That error would imply to me that there is a table layout difference between the publisher and the subscriber. Have any recent updates to the DB structure been applied to one but not the other?

You could run a DB comparison tool (something like the free edition of http://www.sqleffects.com/Articles/Product/sqlAccordInfo/aboutSqlAccordCommunityEd.html should be more than sufficient) against the two databases to check for this.

You probably shouldn't be using SQL 2000 any more - it is somewhat old and the extended support period for its last release (SP4) ended in April this year.

Sql-server – Does the Inserted table contain Identity values

The error is caused by attempting to insert AuditTerms when there is no corresponding primary key in TermKeys. After creating the table schema and trigger in tempdb and inserting a few records in TermKeys, I was able to reproduce it by issuing a DELETE twice on the same TermID:

DELETE FROM TermKeys
WHERE TermID = 1

DELETE FROM TermKeys
WHERE TermID = 1

gives me:

Msg 515, Level 16, State 2, Procedure TRG_TermKeys_AuditTerms_IUD, Line 15 Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'TermID', table 'tempdb.dbo.AuditTerms'; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails. The statement has been terminated.

Something in the application code may be running the query twice; I can't see any other way to get a null value. The best way to avoid the error is to add a precautionary check of @@ROWCOUNT at the beginning of the trigger, since it will return the total number of rows affected by the DML statement that fired it.

ALTER TRIGGER [dbo].[TRG_TermKeys_AuditTerms_IUD] ON [dbo].[TermKeys] 
AFTER INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE NOT FOR REPLICATION AS
BEGIN
  -- If the trigger was fired but no rows were affected, do nothing 
  IF @@ROWCOUNT = 0
    RETURN;
  SET NOCOUNT ON;
  DECLARE @termid int;
  IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM Deleted) SELECT @termid = TermID FROM Deleted;
  IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM Inserted) SELECT @termid = TermID FROM Inserted;
  IF EXISTS(SELECT TermID FROM AuditTerms WHERE (TermID = @termid))
  BEGIN
    UPDATE AuditTerms SET UpdatedAt = getdate() WHERE (TermID = @termid);
  END
  ELSE
  BEGIN
    INSERT INTO AuditTerms (TermID, UpdatedAt) VALUES (@termid, getdate());
  END;
END;

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Sql-server – SQL Server 2000 Replication

Sql-server – Does the Inserted table contain Identity values

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