SQL Server Machine Learning Services and SQL Server 2017 CU7

This post is as much for you as it is for me to come back to when I wonder what to do when SQL Serer Machine Learning Services all of a sudden stops working after a SQL Server upgrade.

Background

Last week I did a complete reformat of my development box at home and installed the latest version of Windows 10: the 1803 build, also called the April 2018 update.

NOTE: I usually try to reformat my box at least twice a year, to ensure it is not too “bogged” down by old “cruft”, and that it has the latest and greatest.

After the reformat I installed all my necessary applications, among them SQL Server 2017 with the in-database analytics components (R and Python). After installation I tested that it all worked and made sure I could execute my usual test scripts for sp_execute_external_script:

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EXECsp_execute_external_script   @language = N'R'                                , @script = N'd <- 42'

Code Snippet 1:Test Script for R

The “moral” equivalent to Code Snippet 1 in Python also worked without an issue:

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EXECsp_execute_external_script@language = N'Python'                                , @script = N'd = 42'

Code Snippet 2:Test Script for Python

Cool, all is “A-OK”! A couple of days go by, and I see that there is a Cumulative Update (CU) for SQL Server 2017 - CU7. I install it and does not think much about it. I mean: “what can go wrong, how hard can it be?”. A couple of days later and I am busy writing the follow-up post to sp_execute_external_script and SQL Compute Context - I when I try to execute sp_execute_external_script, and it falls over!