NET-3859 Fix S6966 FP: ServerConnection.ExecuteNonQuery (SMO) has no async counterpart

[tsimbalar]

Description

Rule S6966 flags ServerConnection.ExecuteNonQuery() from Microsoft SQL Server Management Objects (SMO) with:

Await ExecuteNonQueryAsync instead.

However, ServerConnection.ExecuteNonQuery has no async counterpart. The ServerConnection class (from Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagementObjects) does not provide an ExecuteNonQueryAsync method.

The analyzer likely matches the method name against SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQueryAsync from a different class hierarchy (System.Data.SqlClient / Microsoft.Data.SqlClient), but these are unrelated types.

Reproducer

using Microsoft.Data.SqlClient;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Common;
using Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo;

async Task RunSqlScript(string connectionString, string sqlScript)
{
    await using var connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString);
    await connection.OpenAsync();
    var server = new Server(new ServerConnection(connection));
    server.ConnectionContext.ExecuteNonQuery(sqlScript); // S6966: Await ExecuteNonQueryAsync instead.
}

Product and Version

NuGet SonarAnalyzer.CSharp 10.23.0.137933

[martin-strecker-sonarsource]

Hi @tsimbalar, thanks for the report!

A quick note before we dig in: the linked docs page targets sql-smo-160 (and Microsoft Learn currently defaults to sql-smo-172). However, async overloads of ExecuteNonQuery, ExecuteReader, ExecuteScalar, and ExecuteWithResults were added to ServerConnection in Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagementObjects v181.19.0 (April 2025, ships with SSMS 22):

• Release notes: v181.19.0
• PR: microsoft/sqlmanagementobjects#222
• Source (current main): ServerConnection.cs#L1546 — public async Task<int> ExecuteNonQueryAsync(string sqlCommand, CancellationToken cancellationToken = default)

So whether this is a true FP depends on which SMO version your project references. Could you share the Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlManagementObjects version from your csproj/packages.lock.json?

• If you're on >= 181.19.0: the rule is actually correct — there is an ExecuteNonQueryAsync you can await, and the Microsoft Learn page just hasn't caught up.
• If you're on < 181.19.0 (e.g. v160/v172): we'll dig into why the analyzer is flagging it despite no async counterpart being present on ServerConnection — that would be a genuine FP and we'll get it fixed.

Thanks!

[github-actions]

Internal ticket NET-3859