An internal database error occurred in the Business Data Connectivity Shared Service. SQL Error Number : 229. Occurs after Applying Sharepoint 2013 Service Pack 1 or a Cumultaive Update

We just had a customer report that their user profiles weren’t updating with information from their HR system.

Checking everything was alright I went to Central Admin and the BCS service failed with a standard “An error has occurred and a correlation id”.  Checking the event logs (ULS) via the ULSViewer I got the following error message:

Application error when access /_admin/BDC/ViewBDCApplication.aspx, Error=An internal database error occurred in the Business Data Connectivity Shared Service. SQL Error Number : 229. Please contact your administrator.

at Microsoft.SharePoint.ApplicationPages.ViewBDCApplication.OnLoad(EventArgs args)

at System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive()

at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

Not a lot on the Internet about this but some people do mention SQL Permissions.  We had just applied the December 2014 CU for SharePoint and checking the FIM logs that’s when the problem occurred.

So I checked the permissions on the BCS Database.

The Account the BCS Service runs under was listed but with no database role memberships at all.

I gave it SPDataAccess and it all sprang back into life.

We have added this as something to check after each CU now.

Cheers

Sebastian