TestStand Open SQL Statement does not support SQL's ORDER BY clause???

Question

TestStand 1.0.3
Windows 2000 SP1
SQL Server 2000 Personal
You've got to be kidding me...
It appears that the built-in TestStand Open SQL Step does NOT support the
"ORDER BY" clause in the SELECT statement, even though the documentation
says it does. Is this true?
I have an Open SQL Statement query:
"SELECT * FROM [MyTable] WHERE ([Batch ID]=1234)"
it works fine, returning a correct record count 120 records. If I change
the Open SQL Statement query simply by adding an ORDER BY clause, such as:
"SELECT * FROM [MyTable] WHERE ([Batch ID]=1234) ORDER BY [MyField] ASC"
it returns a record count of zero. I know that "MyField" exists in the
MyTable table and contains valid data. The
second query works fine in SQL
Server Enterprise Manager.
Am I missing something? Is it true that the TestStand Open SQL Step does
NOT support the "ORDER BY" clause? If not, what &#$!ing good is it and why
does the manual state it is supported? Is there any other way using just
the TestStand steps to order a database recordset on one or more fields?
Any help would be appreciated.
Grrrrr....
Bob Rafuse
Etec Inc.

Answer 1

> Bob -
> The database step types do not do anything special to the SQL command
> that you give it. The step just passes the command to the ADO
> provider. I tried a simple query using the step types with the
> following command,
>
> "SELECT UUT_RESULT.* FROM UUT_RESULT WHERE ([UUT_SERIAL_NUMBER] =
> 12345) ORDER BY [EXECUTION_TIME] ASC"
>
> and this return the expected results and the record count parameter
> was as expected. I tried this on TS 1.0.2 and TS 2.0 with MS Access
> 2000 and MS SQL Server 7.0. I do not have MS SQL Server 2000 at this
> time.
>
> It would be surprised if the step types are messing something up.
I've been doing some experimenting over the past couple of days. Simple,
one-table queries seem to handle the ORDER BY clause fine. Th
ings seem to
get messed up when I try multi-table queries with ORDER BY clause with the
TestStand database steps. I get no errors but the returned record counts
are always 0 with the ORDER BY and positive without the ORDER BY. The exact
same queries work fine in Visual Basic/ADO and the SQL Server Query
Analyzer.
> Questions:
> 1. Have you verified whether the data is actually returned even though
> the record count is zero?
Hmmm... yes data IS getting returned (at least on the two instances I just
checked), but the record count is always zero. I was not proceeding with
processing if the record count was 0.
Still... I don't know how to loop through the recordset without knowing how
many records there are an not eventually generate an error by passing EOF.
Is there another way using the TestStand database steps to determine a) the
number of records in the recordset or b) when I'm at EOF?
> 2. Are you using any advanced options on the Opend SQL Statement step
> type, specifically
the cursor type set to forward only? Forward only
> cursors do not allow for record counts.
Everything on the Advanced tab of the Open SQL Statement step is set to "Use
Default".
Bob.