Wrote a new field control today (SharePoint) that queried a specific list in another site collection based on the value of a field from the current list item. This worked great each time I’d test it out and add some additional functionality. When I finished the control, I did a little harder testing by hitting the refresh button in my browser over and over again. Randomly, my control wouldn’t render. Other times it would be fine. What’s up with that?

If you Google it enough, you’ll find that this message generally appears when your CAML is malformed. Well - I used an XmlWriter to build my CAML query (that way my inserted value from the item would be escaped properly for XML), so surely my CAML must be fine if it’s working most times??? Right??? Nope. The XmlWriter by default puts in a processing instruction on the first line:

<xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

Remove this first line and the field controls render each time without error. The specific error I was receiving was:

Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException was caught Message=“Exception occurred. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80020009 (DISP_E_EXCEPTION))” Source=“Microsoft.SharePoint” ErrorCode=-2147352567 StackTrace: at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetListItemDataWithCallback(String bstrUrl, String bstrListName, String bstrViewName, String bstrViewXml, SAFEARRAYFLAGS fSafeArrayFlags, ISP2DSafeArrayWriter pSACallback, ISPDataCallback pPagingCallback, ISPDataCallback pSchemaCallback)