topic Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer in Service

Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

mjohannesson — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 06:22:46 GMT

Starting yesterday afternoon, several of our datasets have failed to refresh with the below error. What is the reason for this error? Our datasets imports data from Databricks Spark Delta tables using the Spark connector into our Premium P1 capacity. I have restarted the Databricks cluster once after this error started occurring, but it did not help.

There was an error when processing the data in the dataset. Please try again later or contact support. If you contact support, please provide these details. Data source error: ERROR [HY000] [Microsoft][Support] (50130) Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer.. The exception was raised by the IDataReader interface. Please review the error message and provider documentation for further information and corrective action. Table: MyTable. Cluster URI: WABI-WEST-EUROPE-redirect.analysis.windows.net

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Mariusz — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 09:27:38 GMT

Hi mjohannesson

If you haven't fixed the issue yet, you can always check if the issue was reported by others here:
https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Issues/idb-p/Issues

or if this did not give you the answer you looking for, you can create a support ticket here:

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/support/pro/

Best Regards,
Mariusz

If this post helps, then please consider Accepting it as the solution.

Please feel free to connect with me.
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Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 12:36:15 GMT

Exact same problem here, super frustrating. Sounds like same timing and same setup.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 13:30:40 GMT

We fasce the same issue with Databricks Spark connector and Power BI. We have opend a ticket but no answer yet ...

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

jcwagnon — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 14:51:28 GMT

Same issue here with Databricks, Delta Tables, and Power BI.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

ChayDommeti — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 15:27:35 GMT

I too am having the same issue , my reports are not refreshing from june 12th. Did anyone find solution?

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Jun 2020 20:56:46 GMT

Just put in a ticket as well. This started occuring first early on 6/17. Don't see any changes in source data or the Power Query settings. But, it only seems to be impacting one load from Databricks Recast all fields in source query to no more than 2 decimal places... Stumped.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

gah113 — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 00:47:21 GMT

We see the same issue with the same set-up.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:39:35 GMT

Same error since 17th June 2020. In our case when copying a table from Databricks to SQL Database with Data Factory. The pipeline was working fine until the error occurred. I think it might be a Databricks error and not PowerBI.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 13:40:45 GMT

Yes, unfortunetly same here, since 17th June 2020.

Power BI connecting to Databricks using Spark connector trying to reach tables using Delta format.

Severity A case opened, almost all of our datasets are not refreshing anymore

If anyone found a workarround... would really be apreciated

Thanks

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 00:16:05 GMT

Is there any update on this ?

Thanks!

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

mjohannesson — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 06:16:09 GMT

I raised a ticket with Microsoft on June 18th, but they haven't yet found a solution.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 06:30:15 GMT

Thanks mjohannesson MS recommend to use Databricks Version lower than 6.4. But no luck!

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

darren-abraham — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 07:34:35 GMT

We tried the downgrade and it didnt work for us either.

After some investigation we found that refreshes in PBI online through the spark connector (to databricks) fails when the data contains datetime and/or decimal types. The same dataset would refresh against the same cluster in powerbi desktop however.

Within our databricks jobs we converted datetime to unix_time and decimal to float or double and the refresh works in both desktop and online PBI versions.

Hope this helps some of you out there.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 01:10:08 GMT

It's working fine when we downgraded it to 5.5LTS

Hope this helps !

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

mjohannesson — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 07:26:01 GMT

Thanks Anonymous! Now, it's working. Microsoft has now posted an awareness message to their support page about this:

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/support/

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 17:57:09 GMT

We are currently running Databricks 6.3, which should be fine, and it fails with the same error message. We opened a ticket with Microsoft.

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Jun 2020 23:33:58 GMT

Hi Anonymous

we tried 6.3 but the issue didn't solve. So we further downgraded to 5.5LTS

Thanks!

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 03:46:00 GMT

I just experienced this issue. Thanks for the discussion and possible workarounds as well as the message from the Microsoft support page:

"Power BI customers using Databricks as a Datasource may encounter the following message during refresh: "Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer". Engineers have identified the root cause as an incompatibility between Databricks version 6.4 (and above) and connector used by Power BI service. Customers can avoid this issue by using a Databricks version lower than 6.4 until the fix is deployed. ETA for a fix will be provided soon. "

Re: Conversion from number to string failed due to undersized character buffer

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:23:05 GMT

Same here, tried 6.3 as stated by Microsoft on the portal, but only works on 5.5 LTS (also suggested by Microsoft in response to our case and some of you guys)

Thanks