Knowledge Base

Cannot resolve collation conflict

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 05 Jun 2009
Product: SQL Backup
Versions: 3,4,5.0,5.1
Fix version: 5.3

When backing up a database, the following error may be displayed:

SQL error 446: Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation

The cause is that the MSDB database, which holds the server's backup history, has a different collation than the tempdb database, where joins are constructed.

Since the collation of the tempdb database is inherited from the model database at SQL Server startup, it's difficult to change the collation of either MSDB or tempdb without rebuilding the SQL Server or using the rebuildm.exe utility that comes with SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005.

Therefore, the only solution is to upgrade to SQL Backup 5.3 or higher, which specifies the collation to use for this query, thereby eliminating this problem.