ALTER INDEX failed because of QUOTED_IDENTIFIER when running from sp_msForEachTable

Question

When I try to rebuild an index on a table:

ALTER INDEX ALL ON [dbo].[Allocations] REBUILD

that works fine.

But when I call

EXECUTE sp_msForEachTable 'ALTER INDEX ALL ON ? REBUILD'

I reach the same same table, and it fails with:

Msg 1934, Level 16, State 1, Line 2
ALTER INDEX failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: 'QUOTED_IDENTIFIER'. Verify that SET options are correct for use with indexed views and/or indexes on computed columns and/or filtered indexes and/or query notifications and/or XML data type methods and/or spatial index operations.

---

And to confirm that it's the same table:

EXECUTE sp_msForEachTable 'print ''Rebuilding ?'';
ALTER INDEX ALL ON ? REBUILD;
PRINT ''   Done ?'''

which gives the results:

Rebuilding [dbo].[SystemConfiguration]
   Done [dbo].[SystemConfiguration]
Rebuilding [dbo].[UserGroups]
   Done [dbo].[UserGroups]
Rebuilding [dbo].[Groups]
   Done [dbo].[Groups]
Rebuilding [dbo].[UserPermissions]
   Done [dbo].[UserPermissions]
Rebuilding [dbo].[AllocationAdmins]
   Done [dbo].[AllocationAdmins]
Rebuilding [dbo].[Allocations]
Msg 1934, Level 16, State 1, Line 2
ALTER INDEX failed because the following SET options have incorrect settings: 'QUOTED_IDENTIFIER'. Verify that SET options are correct for use with indexed views and/or indexes on computed columns and/or filtered indexes and/or query notifications and/or XML data type methods and/or spatial index operations.

What am I not doing wrong?

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Note:

EXECUTE sp_msForEachTable 'DBCC DBREINDEX(''?'')' 

works fine!

Answer 1

Quoted identifier settings are stored against each stored procedure, and sp_MSforeachtable has it defined as OFF. However, you can work around this - by setting it to ON before it executes the re-index:

create table dbo.T (
    ID int not null,
    constraint PK_T PRIMARY KEY (ID)
)
go
create view dbo.V ( ID)
with schemabinding
as
    select ID from dbo.T
go
create unique clustered index IX_V on dbo.V(ID)
go
ALTER INDEX ALL ON dbo.V REBUILD --Fine
go
exec sp_MSforeachtable  'ALTER INDEX ALL ON ? REBUILD' --Errors
go
exec sp_MSforeachtable  'SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON;
ALTER INDEX ALL ON ? REBUILD' --Fine

---

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER:

When a stored procedure is created, the SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER and SET ANSI_NULLS settings are captured and used for subsequent invocations of that stored procedure.

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And, of course, insert the usual caveats about sp_MSforeachtable being undocumented, and so you can't rely on any of its behaviour being stable.

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For DBCC DBREINDEX - all bets are off. DBCC lives in its own little, very customized code world. But, of course, it shouldn't be relied on for future work either:

This feature will be removed in a future version of Microsoft SQL Server. Do not use this feature in new development work, and modify applications that currently use this feature as soon as possible. Use ALTER INDEX instead.