SQL Server Q&A

Symptoms
If you use Bcp.exe to export a table to a flat file, the process may fail with an exception error if you use a format file to change the order of the columns during the export. The exception error occurs within the Bcp.exe file and the following error message appears:

The instruction at “memory_address” referenced memory at “memory_address”.
The memory could not be “written”.The output file is created but no rows are exported.
Resolution
Use a view to change the order of the columns to export. Then, use the view when you perform the bulk copy program and have the format file match the order of the columns in the view.

Symptoms
If you use Bcp.exe to export a table to a flat file, the process may fail with an exception error if you use a format file to change the order of the columns during the export. The exception error occurs within the Bcp.exe file and the following error message appears:

The instruction at “memory_address” referenced memory at “memory_address”.
The memory could not be “written”.The output file is created but no rows are exported.
Resolution
Use a view to change the order of the columns to export. Then, use the view when you perform the bulk copy program and have the format file match the order of the columns in the view.

Symptoms
When you call a COM method through InterOp, you may receive the following error message:

An unhandled exception of type System.Exception occurred in ApplicationName.exe
Additional information: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Resolution
This problem may occur when the order of the methods declaration in the InterOp interface does not match the order of the Vtable layout of the COM interface (which is determined by their layout in IDL). Because you perform early binding in most cases, the order of the methods is very important in this scenario.