An invalid schema or catalog was specified for the provider “SQLNCLI” for linked server “server name”

Ekrem Önsoy

5 years ago

ERROR:

EXPLANATION:

Suppose you have a linked server named “Contoso”.

We get this error when we want to query a table named “Customers” from a database named “Management” on the Contoso server from another server as follows.

SELECT * FROM CONTOSO.Management..Customers

1	SELECT * FROM CONTOSO.Management..Customers

SOLUTION:

Make sure that you use Fully Qualified Name in the queries you use in Linked Server. The draft of this is as follows:

[Linked Server Name].[Database Name].[Schema Name].[Object Name]

Example:

SELECT * FROM CONTOSO.Management.dbo.Customers

1	SELECT * FROM CONTOSO.Management.dbo.Customers