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HTML reference field not displaying on reports... SQL memory issue?

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    HTML reference field not displaying on reports... SQL memory issue?

    This is one of those seemingly impossible to resolve issues - mainly because its happening so sporadically. I have a fairly large application that has been in production for over four years. There are about 40 reports (built native in Alpha) which were all working fine up until about a month ago. There are various xbasic functions that create these reports and output them as PDFs (or appended PDFs in many cases) Users started reporting two issues:
    1. When the various xbasic functions that create the reports are called, users have very sporadically seen the attached xbasic error message. I understand the message and have spent many hours researching and attempting to identify and resolve the memory issue. The two major things I did in SQL were to increase the max memory and re-index the pertinent tables/creating new non-clustered indexes for these tables. No luck.
    2. Users have also reported that reports are sporadically missing the company logo at the header of the page. Some background here: for several reasons, there are a few different versions of this logo. All are stored in an accessible folder on the application server. The pertinent tables which are being used for the various reports all have a field with a file path to the necessary image. On the Alpha side, I added this field to the report as an HTML memo field, thus displaying the image on the report. This has all worked fine for several years up until about a month ago when this problem started happening.
    Ordinarily, I wouldn't connect these two issues however the only consistency here is that they always occur at the same time. For example, one user will report seeing the error message and two minutes later I'll get an email that the image has disappeared from a report. It seems consistent to be a coincidence. 95% of the time the reports are running just fine. For that 5%, both issues always occur.

    One other observation I can share about what's happening here: I have noticed quite a few failed brute force attempts on the database server. We have quite a few safeguards in place to handle this, however could this be affecting memory?

    Thanks for any insight here!
    Attached Files

    #2
    What build are you on? We've been trying to upgrade from build 5566 and now on to the pre-releases, and we have this too. Ours seems limited to some reports, not all. And either the report works, or it doesn't. So far I've not been able to resolve with Alpha but we're working on getting them more per Selwyn's request.
    -Steve
    sigpic

    Comment


      #3
      Thanks Steve. This application is on 5221-5152. Interesting that it would be an application issue. I guess I may have been barking up the wrong tree on this one. Have you done any diagnostics on SQL Server side (or whichever db you're using)?

      Comment


        #4
        Well, no, I don't think it's an application issue. These reports work fine in our production build of 5436, but not in current official or pre-release builds. So, I'm of no help here so far.
        -Steve
        sigpic

        Comment


          #5
          I think it may be a few things - the storage it's referring tomay be the available disk storage on your server drive where the database instance points to. Also The link below describes the possible issues with the dynamic port use case in SQL Express. - I did see this once and rebooted the server and it never came back (The browser errored then asked for a port number for SQL) , also care should be taken when things stop working well after a new install. It may be a driver change in AA - who know - the link below, whilst old may be relevant.

          Cause
          Microsoft SQL Express uses dynamic ports. Confirm that the client workstation can telnet this port by using the port number in the ODBC connection.

          The port used by SQL Express may be closed on the Firewall.
          http://support.na.sage.com/selfservi...9752&sliceId=1

          Good luck.

          Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
          Albert Einstein, (attributed)
          US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

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            #6
            Pete, thanks so much. These are very good leads. I will investigate further. Thanks again!

            Comment


              #7
              This issue is still plaguing me. Some additional info: I was combing through the a5w_reportserver.log file this morning and I can see the errors being recorded but they provided little insight into the problem. For example:

              [Thu Apr 29 10:13:36.887 2021] StartRpt (GUID HERE) ReportName@C:\A5webroot\ReportName.a5rpt C:\Windows\TEMP\tmp1111.pdf

              I also have a load balancer utility (courtesy of Steve Wood) which directs traffic between eight ports on the server. Earlier this week, a user reported the issue and I was able to identify the port being used (via a5w_info page). I then stopped this port to force the user to go through a different port and it temporarily resolved the issue.

              Any ideas?

              Comment


                #8
                I've experienced similar but not identical issues of late as I'm working on getting upgraded. If your report datasource is a custom SQL query, a frequent fix for me has been to use that query to create a SQL View instead, and use the View as the datasource. Worth a try maybe.
                -Steve
                sigpic

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                  #9
                  Bumping this up again as this issue is still plaguing me. Thanks for any help here.

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