The current project I’m working on is a sizeable SP2010 to SP2013 upgrade, and we hit a problem with the Nintex Workflow piece.

When running a workflow after upgrading, the message is simply :

FAILED TO START

When looking at the SharePoint logs, the following message was shown :

Error establishing database connection. SQL Error: 515.: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException (0x80131904): Cannot insert the value NULL into column ‘DatabaseID’, table ‘SvcApp_NintexWorkflow2013_UPG.dbo.Storage’; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.  The statement has been terminated.    

The steps we’d followed, to do the upgrade are via upgrade guide PDF.

• Install Nintex binaries (using v3.0.7 – as we’re on SP2013 SP1)
• Restore SQL Server DB
• Configure within Central Admin

This is where we’d missed a step – oops !

Resolution

Within Central Admin, you actually have to specify the database to use TWICE.

This is due to the fact that Nintex has a “Config” and “Content” database – mostly (usually) within the same SQL database.

This is the same metaphor is true with SharePoint – Config + Content.

In *MY* environment – this was BLANK. #facepalm !

Once I’d set this correctly – my Nintex Workflows began working – yay !