Cannot insert duplicate key row in object ‘fim.ObjectValueReference’ with unique index ‘IX_ObjectValueReference_ObjectKey_AttributeKey-Filtered_Multivalued’.

I was working on a custom workflow activity today that was using the Update Resource activity to update a multivalue field in an object. Unfortunately, the request was coming up as ‘failed’ and in the Event Viewer, I was seeing the following error:

Microsoft.ResourceManagement.WebServices.Exceptions.UnwillingToPerformException: Other —> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Reraised Error 50000, Level 14, State 1, Procedure ReRaiseException, Line 37, Message: Reraised Error 50000, Level 14, State 1, Procedure ReRaiseException, Line 37, Message: Reraised Error 2601, Level 14, State 1, Procedure UpdateResource, Line 515, Message: Cannot insert duplicate key row in object ‘fim.ObjectValueReference’ with unique index ‘IX_ObjectValueReference_ObjectKey_AttributeKey-Filtered_Multivalued’. The duplicate key value is (9101, 87654).

When I investigated the [fim].[UpdateResource] stored procedure and [fim].[ObjectValueReference] in the FIMService database, I could see that 9101 correlated to the object I was trying to update and that 87654 correlated to the multivalue attribute I was trying to update. Next I looked at my code, and it all seemed to be as I expected:

Lastly, I looked at my schema.. and sure enough, my attribute wasn’t flagged as multivalue – somewhere in re-creating my schema, I’d forgotten to check that box. Deleting and re-creating the attribute and its binding resolved my issue, as well as another issue I had when I was trying to read the attribute back – because clearly you can’t read a list of UniqueIdentifiers from a single-value attribute.

Silly mistake, so why do I share it here? Because someone out there may Google this error one day, and this might help them.