*Windows Azure SQL Database makes the blog post title just too darned long!

Followup post: Testing out EF6 Connection Resiliency

I’ve been messing around with the DbExecutionStrategy types in EF6 and trying to force the strategy to kick in.

I spent a horrid amount of time going down the wrong path so thought I would elaborate on the one I’ve been banging on: SqlAzureExecutionStrategy.

I thought that by disconnecting my network connection at the right moment I would be able to see this work. But it turned out that my results were no different in EF5 or with EF6 using it’s DefaulSqlExecutionStrategy (which does not retry).

I finally looked yet again at the description and at some older articles on connection retries for SQL Azure and finally honed in on a critical phrase:

transient failure

A transient failure is one that will most likely correct itself pretty quickly.

Looking at the code for the SqlAzureExecutionStrategy,  you can see the following comment:

/// This execution strategy will retry the operation on <see cref="T:System.TimeoutException"/> 
/// and <see cref="T:System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException"/>
/// if the <see cref="P:System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException.Errors"/> contains any of the following error numbers:
/// 40613, 40501, 40197, 10929, 10928, 10060, 10054, 10053, 233, 64 and 20

Focusing on these errors led me to a number of articles aimed at dealing with this same list of transient failure.

Here is a code sample from the Windows Server AppFabric Customer Advisory Team that contains brief descriptions of the errors:

// SQL Error Code: 40197
// The service has encountered an error processing your request. Please try again.
case 40197:
// SQL Error Code: 40501
// The service is currently busy. Retry the request after 10 seconds.
case 40501:
// SQL Error Code: 10053
// A transport-level error has occurred when receiving results from the server.
// An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine.
case 10053:
// SQL Error Code: 10054
// A transport-level error has occurred when sending the request to the server.
// (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.)
case 10054:
// SQL Error Code: 10060
// A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server.
// The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server
// is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - A connection attempt failed
// because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed
// because connected host has failed to respond.)"}
case 10060:
// SQL Error Code: 40613
// Database XXXX on server YYYY is not currently available. Please retry the connection later. If the problem persists, contact customer
// support, and provide them the session tracing ID of ZZZZZ.
case 40613:
// SQL Error Code: 40143
// The service has encountered an error processing your request. Please try again.
case 40143:
// SQL Error Code: 233
// The client was unable to establish a connection because of an error during connection initialization process before login.
// Possible causes include the following: the client tried to connect to an unsupported version of SQL Server; the server was too busy
// to accept new connections; or there was a resource limitation (insufficient memory or maximum allowed connections) on the server.
// (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.)
case 233:
// SQL Error Code: 64
// A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process.
// (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The specified network name is no longer available.)
case 64:
// DBNETLIB Error Code: 20
// The instance of SQL Server you attempted to connect to does not support encryption.
case (int)ProcessNetLibErrorCode.EncryptionNotSupported:
  return true;

A TechNet wiki article on handling transient failures from Windows Azure SQL Database, warns:

One thing that’s tricky about retry logic is actually inducing a transient error for testing.

Oh, now they tell me! (I am a pitbull and tried so many things already).

Their solution is to intentionally cause a deadlock.

So the SqlAzureExecutionStrategy builds in the same retry logic that until now we’ve had to hand code (ala the example in the TechNet article or the Customer Advisory Team code sample.

I have no question that it will work. I just really like to demonstrate before and after when I can rather than just regurgitate what I’ve read somewhere. 🙂

Followup post: Testing out EF6 Connection Resiliency

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