Why does SQL 2005 say this UDF is non-deterministic?

Question

I have the following function:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO    
ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[IP4toBIGINT](
    @ip4 varchar(15)
) 
RETURNS bigint
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
BEGIN
    -- oc3 oc2 oc1 oc0
    -- 255.255.255.255
    -- Declared as BIGINTs to avoid overflows when multiplying later on     DECLARE @oct0 bigint, @oct1 bigint, @oct2 bigint, @oct3 bigint;
    DECLARE @Result bigint;

    SET @oct3 = CAST(PARSENAME(@ip4, 4) as tinyint);
    SET @oct2 = CAST(PARSENAME(@ip4, 3) as tinyint);
    SET @oct1 = CAST(PARSENAME(@ip4, 2) as tinyint);
    SET @oct0 = CAST(PARSENAME(@ip4, 1) as tinyint);

    -- Combine all values, multiply by 2^8, 2^16, 2^24 to bitshift.
    SET @Result = @oct3 * 16777216 + @oct2 * 65536 + @oct1 * 256 + @oct0;
    RETURN @Result;

END

But...

SELECT 
     OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'IsDeterministic') as IsDeterministic 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'IsPrecise') as IsPrecise 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'IsSystemVerified') as IsSystemVerified 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'SystemDataAccess') as SystemDataAccess 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'UserDataAccess') as UserDataAccess 

Returns (result transposed):

IsDeterministic 0

IsPrecise 1

IsSystemVerified 1

SystemDataAccess 0

UserDataAccess 0

I tried dropping and recreating the function several times to make sure it's not some caching issue. CAST should be deterministic here since I'm using it for strings->integers.

I'm completely stumped, any ideas?

Answer 1

PARSENAME is nondeterministic, on the whole. Yes, you are using it in a context which is deterministic, but I'm guessing that the server does not know that. Try replacing PARSENAME and see if it changes.

Answer 2

It's the PARSENAME causing problems. Replacing it with a hardcoded string results in determinism. No idea why... parse name is supposedly just a fancy split function.

Check this out:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO    
ALTER FUNCTION [dbo].[IP4toBIGINT](
    @ip4 varchar(15)
) 
RETURNS bigint
WITH SCHEMABINDING
AS
BEGIN
    -- oc3 oc2 oc1 oc0
    -- 255.255.255.255
    -- Declared as BIGINTs to avoid overflows when multiplying later on         
    DECLARE @oct0 bigint, @oct1 bigint, @oct2 bigint, @oct3 bigint;
    DECLARE @Result bigint;

    SET @oct3 = CAST('1' as tinyint);
    SET @oct2 = CAST('2' as tinyint);
    SET @oct1 = CAST('3' as tinyint);
    SET @oct0 = CAST('4' as tinyint);

    -- Combine all values, multiply by 2^8, 2^16, 2^24 to bitshift.
    SET @Result = @oct3 * 16777216 + @oct2 * 65536 + @oct1 * 256 + @oct0

    RETURN @Result
END
GO

SELECT 
     OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'IsDeterministic') as IsDeterministic 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'IsPrecise') as IsPrecise 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'IsSystemVerified') as IsSystemVerified 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'SystemDataAccess') as SystemDataAccess 
    ,OBJECTPROPERTYEX(OBJECT_ID('dbo.IP4toBIGINT'), 'UserDataAccess') as UserDataAccess

Results:

IsDeterministic IsPrecise IsSystemVerified  SystemDataAccess UserDataAccess
1               1         1                 0                0