ALTER TABLE SWITCH statement failed. There is no identical index in source table '%.*ls' for the index '%.*ls' in target table '%.*ls' .

Error Message:
Msg 4947, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
ALTER TABLE SWITCH statement failed. There is no identical index in source table '%.*ls' for the index '%.*ls' in target table '%.*ls' .

Severity level:
16.

Description:
This error message appears when you try to execute an ALTER TABLE SWITCH command, for which source and table table have different indexes.

Consequences:
The T-SQL statement can be parsed, but causes the error at runtime.

Resolution:
Errors of the Severity Level 16 are generated by the user and are corrigible by the user. The statement cannot be executed this way. Source and target table must have identical indexes.

Versions:
This error message was introduced with SQL Server 2005.

Example(s):
USE Pubs
GO
CREATE PARTITION FUNCTION myPartFunction (int)
    AS RANGE LEFT FOR VALUES (1, 10, 100);
GO

CREATE PARTITION SCHEME myPartScheme
    AS PARTITION myPartFunction
   ALL TO ([PRIMARY]);
GO

CREATE TABLE myPartTable
(
 c1 int
)
ON myPartScheme (c1);

GO
CREATE TABLE myNonPartTable
(
 c1 int
)
ON [PRIMARY];
GO
CREATE INDEX IX_myNonPartIndex ON myNonPartTable(c1);
GO
ALTER TABLE myPartTable SWITCH PARTITION 1 TO dbo.myNonPartTable ;
GO

DROP TABLE myNonPartTable, myPartTable;
DROP PARTITION SCHEME myPartScheme;
DROP PARTITION FUNCTION myPartFunction;

Remarks:
In the above example we try to execute an ALTER TABLE SWITCH command. Because the target table does have the index myNonPartIndex, which the source table does not have, the error is raised.