Errors: "INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested." and "Cannot use the ROLLBACK statement within an INSERT-EXEC statement." How to solve this?

Question

I have three stored procedures Sp1, Sp2 and Sp3.

The first one (Sp1) will execute the second one (Sp2) and save returned data into @tempTB1 and the second one will execute the third one (Sp3) and save data into @tempTB2.

If I execute the Sp2 it will work and it will return me all my data from the Sp3, but the problem is in the Sp1, when I execute it it will display this error:

INSERT EXEC statement cannot be nested

I tried to change the place of execute Sp2 and it display me another error:

Cannot use the ROLLBACK statement within an INSERT-EXEC statement.

Answer 1

This is a common issue when attempting to 'bubble' up data from a chain of stored procedures. A restriction in SQL Server is you can only have one INSERT-EXEC active at a time. I recommend looking at How to Share Data Between Stored Procedures which is a very thorough article on patterns to work around this type of problem.

For example a work around could be to turn Sp3 into a Table-valued function.