"Catastrophic Failure" or Scripting Errors with Database Queries

ID: Q159220

The information in this article applies to:

SYMPTOMS

While running database queries, you may receive a "catastrophic failure" error or other scripting error.

CAUSE

Queries into database tables whose Binary Large Object (BLOB) columns contain NULL as a data value fail when the Content object or ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) is used. (BLOBs are the columns that typically contain LONGVARCHAR and LONGVARBINARY data. For example, in Microsoft SQL Server, TEXT and IMAGE datatypes are BLOBs.)

WORKAROUND

Check to see if you have any BLOB columns in the query. If you see scripting errors in response to queries, check the BLOB columns to make sure they do not contain NULL values. You may want to specify a default value for BLOB columns to avoid this problem.

Keywords          : kberrmsg CommMisc kbfaq
Version           : 2.0
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbprb

Last Reviewed: July 12, 1997