"Unresolved Reference To Built In Type" errors on basic SQL data types

Question

My database projects in Visual Studio have recently starting throwing these unresolved reference errors every time any create table file in the project is touched.

SQL71501: Column: ___ has an unresolved reference to Built-in Type [int].
SQL71501: Column: ___ has an unresolved reference to Built-in Type [datetime].
SQL71501: Column: ___ has an unresolved reference to Built-in Type [varchar].

If I rebuild the project, everything builds with no errors, and the errors flagged by Visual Studio disappear. However, as soon as I edit any file (even as little as adding a space to the end of a file), that file will immediately become plagued with these unresolved reference errors... until I rebuild again. However, as it's a fairly large project, I don't want to spend about a minute rebuilding after every single minor edit.

This project is worked on by several other people, who do not encounter this issue. How can I resolve this?

Update: If I change tabs, the errors for the first tab disappear until I go back to it. I've also disabled all extensions, but the problem still occurs.

Does your views/SPs reference the tables using this naming convention ( 3 parts qualified name ) ? 'DatabaseName.SchemaName.TableName' — Dvir
– Dvir, Commented Jan 14, 2016 at 12:40
Sorry, didn't clarify it correctly - it's the create table scripts specifically that do it. Those are written create table [schema].[table] ( ... ) — Kai
– Kai, Commented Jan 14, 2016 at 13:20
This is just an educated guess , please check the custom type's file properties in VS and make sure Build Action is set to Build. — Dvir
– Dvir, Commented Jan 14, 2016 at 17:37
@DeJaVo, thank you! That was the fix for me. Never would have thought of that as something to check. — John Washam
– John Washam, Commented Sep 29, 2018 at 19:35
my issue was I tried opening a visual studio 2022 solution file in visual studio 2019 — Kristopher
– Kristopher, Commented Aug 8, 2024 at 14:44

Kai · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-18 08:43:49Z

20

Close down Visual Studio, navigate to the project folder and find the .dbmdl file. Delete it. Reopen the project and rebuild it. This should solve the problem.

answered Mar 18, 2016 at 8:43

Kai

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3 Comments

Elaskanator Over a year ago

The issue keeps coming back though. Hopefully one day we can track down the source of the corruption (multiple open VS instances perhaps?).

Elaskanator Over a year ago

I'm having this issue recur sometimes multiple times a day, without using multiple VS instances. This is also after performing a full repair on VS. I'm using VS 2015.

Dodecaphone Feb 7 at 13:37

Sadly, this had no discernible impact in my situation.

Fl4v · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-28 09:18:22Z

2

In my case the solution was to change the target of my SSDT project to a more recent version of SQL Server (right click on the projet/Properties/Project Settings/Target platform).

See: https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/565459/FixingplusSSDTplusunresolvedplusreferenceplustoplu

answered Mar 28, 2017 at 9:18

Fl4v

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2 Comments

Matt Arnold Over a year ago

Just to add to this, to find out which version of SQL Server I was running, I ran SELECT @@VERSION against the database.

Fl4v Over a year ago

Thanks for this specification.

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