I recently moved a Rails application to a new SQL Server 2005 server on a recent project and everything seemed to go smoothly, but when I tried to fire up a connection to the database from my Rails application, I was greeted with

ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: DBI::DatabaseError: 42000 (15197) [FreeTDS][SQL Server]There is no text for object 'people'.: EXEC sp_helptext people

The “people” table here is actually a view that gets used all over the place in multiple applications. The DBA had moved the databases from an older SQL Server 2000 database previously.

The solution was to ensure that the application’s user account had the “view definition” permission on the view in question as well as the “select” permission. On the view, in the SQL Server Management Studio, right click and choose “Properties”. Then choose Permissions select your user account, and then select the “View definition” permission. Checking the box under the “Grant” column was enough for me to make it work.

Interestingly enough, the production server (which was upgraded months ago from SQL Server 2000 to 2005), does not have the permission set, but still works fine.

Hopefully someone else finds this useful.