Re: ODBC queries from Windows NT .idc files fail

In article <33bae6bd.0_at_ch1.kcdata.com>, weckels_at_jorsm.com says...
>
>
>
> On Friday, six queries that could be run from our intranet
>appeared to work well. On Monday, they all stopped working.

     We fixed our trouble a few days ago. Thanks to the people who wrote. Here's what we did.

>Our system uses NT 4.0 for the Web server, NT 3.51 as the Oracle server,
>Microsoft IIS 3.0 on the Web server and Oracle 7.2. All queries

...and an Intersolv ODBC driver...

>are done from NT Workstation 4.0 using Netscape 3.01. We are using
>Internet Database Connector, a Microsoft thing.
 

>
> We use .idc files to send queries to an Oracle 7.2 database.

     Our .idc files were not at fault.

> A friend noted that we put .idc, .htx and .html files on the
>same directory; Microsoft's TechNet instructions tell us to
>put .idc and .htx files in their own directory. I would suspect
>this more had the queries not been running without trouble for
>almost four weeks. (I'll do this when we solve the current
>problems or when I get desperate.)

     This was not the cause of the trouble, as we are running well now no matter where the queries are located. Organizing files this way has proven convenient, however.

> After several reboots of our Web server, looking at a bunch of
>logs and talking to our vendor, this is what we know:
>
> We traced some queries and saw that the SQL.LOG file calls a number
>of routines successfully. When it finally gets to the routine that
>executes the query, the query is correctly generated but is never
>performed. (I verified that the query is good by cutting it and
>pasting it into the online SQL system provided; the query worked
>perfectly there.) The routine that executes the query starts, but never
>stops.

     The problem did not rest with Oracle 7.2

> Failed queries do not go away; we needed to enter the process
>administrator and stop a bunch of these queries, or Oracle would
>refuse to accept another connection (leading to Oracle server reboot;
>not very nice!) All of the failed queries were always idle,

     Actually, deleting these queries from the process administrator made it _appear_ that they went away. Problem is, Oracle still counted a connection, even after the queries were deleted. This problem came back even though we only saw nine processes active. Oracle saw fifty. I heard that stopping and restarting Oracle will get rid of extra processes for good, but have not tried it to date. Of course, it is too late to restart Oracle when its process limit has been reached and no other process (say, the process administrator) can get online. YMMV.

> When the client performs the query from Netscape (NT Workstation
>4.0, Netscape Standard 3.01), Netscape sends the query then hogs the
>CPU. On the server, CPU utilization increases for about two
>seconds, then falls to background levels.

     Perhaps this was an important clue...

>
> Our guess is that Oracle gets the query, but then forgets about
>it and does not drop the connection.

     Oracle may have known the query was coming, but now I do not think that it got the query.

> What should we do? I would be most grateful to know.

     Here's what we did:

     The web server registry was rebuilt from the repair disk and newer software was reinstalled. This solved most of our trouble. The rest was solved when we went into the Control Panel on the web server, changed the ODBC driver from Oracle73 (bad because (a) it was not our driver and (b) Oracle73 and active server pages are reported to get along very badly) to our Intersolv ODBC driver. Since part of my applied futility was involved with uninstalling and installing IIS, I made sure that all of the aliases were in order.

> Warren Eckels
> weckels_at_jorsm.com
Received on Thu Jul 10 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT