connection.execute() always returns -1 on Rails 4.0.4, Ruby 2.1.1

[paquettej]

I am trying to use execute() to run a query to compute percentages over a partition, so I would like to use connection#execute to run it. However, it returns -1 even though the sql works fine in SQL Server Management Studio.

To eliminate issues from my query, I tried a simple count(*) via the rails console and found that that also returns -1.

Note that I am successfully using sql server in this application without issue, so I am confident in the configuration and setup in general.

Using activerecord-sqlserver-adapter via:

ruby '2.1.1'
gem 'rails', '4.0.4'    
gem 'activerecord-sqlserver-adapter', git: 'git://github.com/rails-sqlserver/activerecord-sqlserver-adapter.git'
gem 'tiny_tds'

Given the following class:

class MetricsDatabase < ActiveRecord::Base
  establish_connection 'metricsdb'
end

With the following config:

metricsdb:
  adapter: sqlserver
  host: ******
  mode: dblib
  dataserver: ******\metricsdb
  database: wms
  username: *****
  password: ******

In the console:

2.1.1 :031 > MetricsDatabase.connected?
 => true 
2.1.1 :032 > MetricsDatabase.connection.execute("select count(*) from [metric];")
   (64.6ms)  select count(*) from [metric];
 => -1 

[sixfeetover]

execute on the TinyTds connection (which you are accessing with MetricsDatabase.connection.execute) just runs the SQL without returning the result. You want to run connection.select_all to return the query results. See https://github.com/rails-sqlserver/tiny_tds#tinytdsresult-usage.

[metaskills]

Yes, ActiveRecord's #execute is not for that. Check out the database statements if you are interested or go level to TinyTDS or ODBC using raw_connection.

[paquettej]

Aha. Good to know, thanks.