not your every day communication problem

I just returned from a service call that I was able to fix, but don't understand everything I saw on the way.

Platform was Oracle 8.1.7.4 on NT Server.

Application resides on the same server as the db, which is located off site, but there is a wan connection back to our data center. That connection is used to authenticate the domain user under which the app runs. TNSNAMES and LISTENER describes a normal network connection, referencing the IP address of the server. I know that isn't what should have been done, but there we are.

The wan connection was lost due to physical damage from sever storms we had last night. Connections to the db were failing with 'end-of-channel' communications errors. Alert log showed no problems and seemed to indicate the database was up and healthy. I decided that since the TNSNAMES and LISTENER were set up the way they were, the connection path was still trying to go over the wan to a router and back. I would like to have set up an IPC or BEQ connection, but there were no samples on the server and I had no docs available to me at the site. No manuals, and with no wan connection could not get to tahiti.

At this point I decided to try a loopback connection and changed the IP address referenced in TNSNAMES to 127.0.0.1. Connection still failed. The applications analyst that was working with me said that the currently logged on user (to the server) was a domain user working off cached information and wondered if that might be an issue, so he logged back on as a local user. By this time I remembered I also needed to change the IP address in LISTENER.ORA. I did, and the connection worked fine. We went back to the domain user that the app is *supposed* to run under (again, the log on warned of no connection and that the user would run under cached info.) and the database connection again failed.

I know that I want to get this app to an IPC or BEQ connection to cut the network out of the picture, but I'm curious about the difference in behavior between being logged on to the server as a local user vs. a domain user. Received on Mon May 05 2003 - 13:08:59 CDT