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SQL Server Error Messages - Msg 313

Error Message

Server: Msg 313, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
An insufficient number of arguments were supplied for the procedure or function Stored Procedure or Function Name.

Causes

As the message describes, this error is encountered when you are passing arguments or parameters to a function or stored procedure which is less than what the function or stored procedure is expecting.

To illustrate, let’s say you have the following function definition:

CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[ufn_Concat]
( @pString1 VARCHAR(10), @pString2 VARCHAR(10), @pString3 VARCHAR(10) )
RETURNS VARCHAR(30)
AS
BEGIN
    RETURN ISNULL(@pString1 + ' ', '') + 
           ISNULL(@pString2 + ' ', '') +
           ISNULL(@pString3, '')
END

This function expects 3 arguments, namely @pString1, @pString2 and @pString3. To use this function, you do the following:

SELECT [dbo].[ufn_Concat] ( [FirstName], [MiddleName], [LastName] ) AS [FullName]
FROM [dbo].[Customers]

The error will be encountered you don’t pass 3 arguments or parameters to the function, as follows:

SELECT [dbo].[ufn_Concat] ( [FirstName], [LastName] ) AS [FullName]
FROM [dbo].[Customers]

Server: Msg 313, Level 16, State 2, Line 1
An insufficient number of arguments were supplied for the procedure or function dbo.ufn_Concat.

Solution / Work Around

To avoid this error from happening, always make sure that you pass the same number of arguments that a stored procedure or function is expecting. To know the parameters expected by a stored procedure, you can use the sp_help system stored procedure and pass the name of the stored procedure as the parameter.