Symptoms
Assume that you have an UPDATE statement that references a nonexistent partition function by using the $PARTITION keyword in Microsoft SQL Server 2014, 2016, or 2017. For example,
UPDATE TableName SET ColumnName='xyz' WHERE $PARTITION.NonExistingPartitionFunction(ColumnName) = 1
In this situation, SQL Server does not perform an update or return an error message to indicate that the NonExistingPartitionFunction object does not exist. However, from the user perspective, it seems that the UPDATE statement is executed successfully, but actually it failed.
Cause
When you execute a batch, SQL Server may perform the deferred name resolution (DNR). In this process, SQL Server does not immediately produce an error when it encounters a nonexistent object, and it expects that the object will be created by the module or batch before the execution of the statement that references that object. For partition functions, SQL Server does not handle DNR correctly.
More Information
For more information about DNR, see Deferred Name Resolution.
Resolution
This issue is fixed in the following cumulative updates for SQL Server:
Cumulative update 8 for SQL Server 2016 SP1
Each new cumulative update for SQL Server contains all the hotfixes and all the security fixes that were included with the previous cumulative update. Check out the latest cumulative updates for SQL Server:
Latest cumulative update for SQL Server 2016
Status
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.
References
Learn about the terminologythat Microsoft uses to describe software updates.
