Quickly discover the meaning of an error number

Sometimes a client or software program may report a SQL Server error number without the description. For example, you may see a reference to Msg 109, or some other cryptic number.

To determine the error, simply query the sysmessages table in the master database. For example, to find out what Msg 109 means, issue the following query:

SELECT *

FROM master.dbo.sysmessages

WHERE error = 109