Protocol Error in TDS Stream vs Network Packet Size

[Gavin Chan]

We encounter the 'Protocol Error in TDS Stream' error in Excel that connect
to SQL Server 2000 (SP3) with MS Query. We later found that this occurs when
the user select too many fields from the MS Query Designer.

Interestingly, we later found that this can be fixed by enlarging the
'Network Packet Size' configuration setting in the SQL Server! From my
understanding, I would think that if something is too large for a single
network packet, it will just be broken into smaller pieces and that should be
transparent to the application. However, what we found here seems to mean
something else. We dare not to apply this on production as we are afraid of
the possible side effect.

Is this a bug in MS Query, Excel or SQL Server and is there any better
workaround for this problem?

[Kevin McDonnell [MSFT]]

It could be a bug, however everyone's network could impact the behavior.
Does this also occur if you were to query the server locally?

Thanks,

Kevin McDonnell
Microsoft Corporation

This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Gavin Chan]

Do you mean that query the server locally by ms excel and msquery? We didn't
try that before. However, if we are using query analyzer, this problem did
not occur.

We can simulate the same problem with Excel 2000, XP and 2003. If this is a
bug, it seems to be related to SQL Server. We are using SQL Server 2000 + SP3
(8.00.847) but I am not able to find any fix that is related to the problem.

Post by Kevin McDonnell [MSFT]
It could be a bug, however everyone's network could impact the behavior.
Does this also occur if you were to query the server locally?
Thanks,
Kevin McDonnell
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Gavin Chan]

We reported this problem and finally we confirmed that it is a bug.

For MSQuery, ODBC driver is used which has a problem in retrieving large
recordset. With our default setting in SQL Server - Network Packet Size =
4096, the field definition for the recordset is too large to fit in one
network packet and ODBC driver do not handle this properly and the problem
occur. Microsoft said that a fix will be available in next version of Windows
....

Post by Gavin Chan
Do you mean that query the server locally by ms excel and msquery? We didn't
try that before. However, if we are using query analyzer, this problem did
not occur.
We can simulate the same problem with Excel 2000, XP and 2003. If this is a
bug, it seems to be related to SQL Server. We are using SQL Server 2000 + SP3
(8.00.847) but I am not able to find any fix that is related to the problem.

Post by Kevin McDonnell [MSFT]
It could be a bug, however everyone's network could impact the behavior.
Does this also occur if you were to query the server locally?
Thanks,
Kevin McDonnell
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.