Forum Discussion

coreyw's avatar
coreyw
Icon for Helper I rankHelper I
9 years ago

Optional related entity - why 'Error'?

I am modifying a Query against an entity provided by an OData source.  An entity 'A' has an optional relationship to another entity 'B'.  i.e. 'A' has an (nullable) foreign key column and a navigatio...
Need Help
GilbertQ's avatar
GilbertQ
Icon for Super User rankSuper User
9 years ago

Hi coreyw

 

In my opinion this is by design in order for a relationship to work it needs to be able to identify each side of the relationship.

 

And what happens is that when there is a NULL value it cannot by any means make that identification, and thus this is why it fails.

  • coreyw's avatar
    coreyw
    Icon for Helper I rankHelper I
    9 years ago

    Thanks for the comments.  If it is an optional relationship, it's not an error and shouldn't be flagged as an 'error'.  'NULL' or empty would make much more sense.

     

    GilbertQ,v-ljerr-msft, I'm afraid this is a bigger deal than it looks like on the surface.

     

    The problem I have with this is that when you save the query, an error dialog comes up, and then it throws AWAY all the records with these so-called errors.

     

    This should not be the default behavior.  It's throwing away semantically valid records. It's a data loss bug, and a serious one.

     

    The maddening part is that Power Query Excel does NOT throw away the error records, so there is no consistancy.