Return Multiple Arrays From Stored Procedure through Flow

[johnmarlowe]

I have a Flow that executes a SQL Stored Procedure on an On Prem Database via a Gateway. The Stored Procedure returns 2 tables and I've checked that when I execute this in Management Studio, both tables are returned. When I execute this through flow and examine the output body only the first table is shown to be returned in the JSON. Does anyone have experience with returning multiple tables from a SQL stored procedure into Flow? Many thanks Andrew

[SynergyM]

I'm trying to do this same thing as you and getting the same results.  I'm trying to return about 15 queries and 30 output parameters, but only the first query is returned.

I'm going off of this article: https://baizini-it.com/blog/index.php/2018/05/10/powerapps-concurrently-returning-variables-and-mult...

It sounds like the person in the article is using Azure SQL, so I'm curious if this is a limitation of the On Prem Gateway?

[SynergyM · Accepted solution]

I found documentation on this limitation:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/sql/ 

When invoking a Stored Procedure on an on-premises SQL server, we have the following limitations:

• Output values for OUTPUT parameters are not returned. You can still specify input values for OUTPUT parameters.
• Return value is not available.
• Only the first result set is returned.
• Dynamics schemas are not supported for result sets.

[johnmarlowe]

It had crossed my mind whether the On Prem option had that limitation. Dissapointed, however I was only looking to return one more data set, and not as many as you so I think my dissapointment is probably not as great as yours! at the moment, I'm doing a refresh and collect call to the dataset source through the standard sql connector in powerapps post-flow execution, and the execution time isn't too bad. But if you had to do this for all your datasets that's a massive additional set of executions and driving that much traffic traffic through the gateway will inevitably give your app a performance hit. Hope they're able to extend this feature to the on prem option (and soon).

Thanks for your help

Andrew

[DarkLiteOne]

Stumbled upon this very same issue and it's still not possible to return multiple ResultSets for a single stored procedure with an On Premises SQL Server. Very annoying... Now we have to do 4 calls instead of just 1.

[Benjamin_Adam]

I just found a workaorund that is at least usable for small datasets.
You can return your tables with for json like:

SELECT
(SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Table1] FOR JSON AUTO) AS [Table1],
(SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Table2] FOR JSON AUTO) AS [Table2],
(SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Table3] FOR JSON AUTO) AS [Table3],
(SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Table4] FOR JSON AUTO) AS [Table4]

Back in powerautomate you can use the json expression

json(outputs('Execute_stored_procedure_(V2)')?['body/resultsets/table1']?[0]?['Table1'])
json(outputs('Execute_stored_procedure_(V2)')?['body/resultsets/table1']?[0]?['Table2'])
json(outputs('Execute_stored_procedure_(V2)')?['body/resultsets/table1']?[0]?['Table3'])
json(outputs('Execute_stored_procedure_(V2)')?['body/resultsets/table1']?[0]?['Table4'])

(I use this within the "parse json" action) 

As written befor, this might not be a (good) solution for larger datasets. For my personal issue this is just enough. Maybe it helps someone too.