What causes "failed to get views from database %q" in bytebase/bytebase?

Inspect the wrapped cause for the gRPC status code

failed to get views from database %q

Error message

failed to get views from database %q

What it means

Raised during Spanner schema sync inside a read-only transaction: the getView helper, which queries INFORMATION_SCHEMA views to enumerate view definitions (using the already-fetched column map), returned an error. This aborts assembly of the DatabaseSchemaMetadata for the database; the cause is in the wrapped error, usually a failed Spanner query or permission issue reading INFORMATION_SCHEMA.

Source

Thrown at backend/plugin/db/spanner/sync.go:82

	}

	tx := d.client.ReadOnlyTransaction()
	defer tx.Close()

	databaseMetadata := &storepb.DatabaseSchemaMetadata{
		Name: d.databaseName,
	}
	columnMap, err := getColumn(ctx, tx)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrapf(err, "failed to get table columns from database %q", d.databaseName)
	}
	tableMap, err := getTable(ctx, tx, columnMap)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrapf(err, "failed to get tables from database %q", d.databaseName)
	}
	viewMap, err := getView(ctx, tx, columnMap)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, errors.Wrapf(err, "failed to get views from database %q", d.databaseName)
	}

	schemaNameMap := make(map[string]bool)
	for schemaName := range tableMap {
		schemaNameMap[schemaName] = true
	}
	for schemaName := range viewMap {
		schemaNameMap[schemaName] = true
	}
	var schemaNames []string
	for schemaName := range schemaNameMap {
		schemaNames = append(schemaNames, schemaName)
	}
	slices.Sort(schemaNames)
	for _, schemaName := range schemaNames {
		databaseMetadata.Schemas = append(databaseMetadata.Schemas, &storepb.SchemaMetadata{
			Name:   schemaName,
			Tables: tableMap[schemaName],

View on GitHub (pinned to 1870550677)

Solutions

Inspect the wrapped cause for the gRPC status code
Retry the sync after transient failures
Verify read access to INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS
Extend the sync context timeout

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(ctx, 5*time.Minute)
defer cancel()

Try / catch

meta, err := driver.SyncDBSchema(ctx)
if err != nil && strings.Contains(err.Error(), "failed to get views") {
	// retry or surface partial metadata
}

Prevention

Give INFORMATION_SCHEMA reads adequate timeouts
Verify view-visibility permissions for the sync account
Retry transient Spanner errors with backoff

When it happens

Trigger: Calling SyncDBSchema when the view listing query in getView returns an error from Spanner.

Common situations: Spanner transient failure or quota exhaustion, context cancelled, permissions missing on INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS, database deleted concurrently.

Understand the failure class

Background: "query failed", "%w: SQL error" — wrapped database query errors in Go libraries explained — this error's family across 3 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of bytebase/bytebase@1870550677 (2026-09-06). Data as JSON: /api/errors/f7d606d98069eea6. Report an issue: GitHub.