sql server linked server to oracle returns no data found when data exists

Question

I have a linked server setup in SQL Server to hit an Oracle database. I have a query in SQL Server that joins on the Oracle table using dot notation. I am getting a “No Data Found” error from Oracle. On the Oracle side, I am hitting a table (not a view) and no stored procedure is involved.

First, when there is no data I should just get zero rows and not an error.
Second, there should actually be data in this case.
Third, I have only seen the ORA-01403 error in PL/SQL code; never in SQL.

This is the full error message:
OLE DB provider "OraOLEDB.Oracle" for linked server "OM_ORACLE" returned message "ORA-01403: no data found".
Msg 7346, Level 16, State 2, Line 1 Cannot get the data of the row from the OLE DB provider "OraOLEDB.Oracle" for linked server "OM_ORACLE".

Here are some more details, but it probably does not mean anything since you don’t have my tables and data.
This is the query with the problem:

select *
   from eopf.Batch b join eopf.BatchFile bf
                 on b.BatchID = bf.BatchID
          left outer join [OM_ORACLE]..[OM].[DOCUMENT_UPLOAD] du
                 on bf.ReferenceID = du.documentUploadID;

I can’t understand why I get a “no data found” error. The query below uses the same Oracle table and returns no data but I don’t get an error - I just get no rows returned.

select * from [OM_ORACLE]..[OM].[DOCUMENT_UPLOAD] where documentUploadID = -1

The query below returns data. I just removed one of the SQL Server tables from the join. But removing the batch table does not change the rows returned from batchFile (271 rows in both cases – all rows in batchFile have a batch entry). It should still be joining the same batchFile rows to the same Oracle rows.

select *
from eopf.BatchFile bf
   left outer join [OM_ORACLE]..[OM].[DOCUMENT_UPLOAD] du
      on bf.ReferenceID = du.documentUploadID;

And this query returns 5 rows. It should be the same 5 from the original query. ( I can’t use this because I need data from the batch and batchFile table).

       select *
   from [OM_ORACLE]..[OM].[DOCUMENT_UPLOAD] du
   where du.documentUploadId
   in
   (
   select bf.ReferenceID
   from eopf.Batch b join eopf.BatchFile bf
                 on b.BatchID = bf.BatchID);

Has anyone experienced this error?

Answer 1

Today I experienced the same problem with an inner Join. As creating a Table Valued Function suggested by codechurn or using a Temporary Table suggested by user1935511 or changing the Join Types suggested by cymorg are no options for me, I like to share my solution.

I used Join Hints to drive the query optimizer into the right direction, as the problem seems to rise up from nested loops join strategy with the remote table locally . For me HASH, MERGE and REMOTE join hints worked.

For you REMOTE will not be an option because it can be used only for inner join operations. So using something like the following should work.

select *
from eopf.Batch b
join eopf.BatchFile bf
  on b.BatchID = bf.BatchID
left outer merge join [OM_ORACLE]..[OM].[DOCUMENT_UPLOAD] du
  on bf.ReferenceID = du.documentUploadID;