Contributor macro hangs

[John 27182]

Hi Everyone.

We have a contributor macro which calls an analyst macro. The analyst macro imports data from a text file into a D-Cube. However the macro is hanging.

In the past the macro worked, and we are doing a similar data import for other text files in the same ODBC connection and things work. Indeed the macro works when we run it in analyst, it just fails when we run it in contributor.

I suspect that part of the problem may be that the text file is too large (45 MB).

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

[ericlfg]

Hello again, John.. 

I recall a while back you had some issues getting the macro to run which was solved by re-specifying the DSN connection to a network drive.  (http://www.cognoise.com/community/index.php/topic,13743.msg43634.html#msg43634)

As you mentioned that the text files are quite large, 45 mb, I'm wondering:  Is that different from before?  If it is, can you confirm how large the files were before, and possibly cut out enough to get it down to the same size to test this theory?

Also, what is the error you're getting from Contributor?  How long does it take to fail?

Cheers

[John 27182]

Hi Ericlfg,

It's a different problem then before, it's a different macro. The strange thing is that this macro has been working for a long time, it's only recently that it started to hang- I'm not aware of any changes to the model at this time.

The macro isn't failing, it's hanging. So it's running indefinitely- there is no error message. I'm having to force the macro to end.

I've tried importing only a subset of the text file, but the macro still hangs. So perhaps the problem isn't that the file is too large.

Thanks for any suggestions,

John.

[ericlfg]

Hey John,

When I mentioned error, I was merely quoting you:

... it just fails when we run it in contributor.

My bad. :)

As for the issue, you may want to find the planningerrorlog.csv on the machine that you're running the CAC, this might reveal something.  You will want to reference a time stamp that represents when the macro became hung.  Additionally, to confirm, other analyst macros called from contributor run without problems?

If the issue appears to be isolated to this one single macro and that it used to function without errors, try re-creating all the steps of the analyst macro (as a test) and see if that clears things up.  Something might be cached that is no longer valid that would require things to b re-created.

[John 27182]

Hi Ericlfg, as always thanks for the support.  8)

The macro has now suddenly started working again. It began working again yesterday morning, and the same today.

A speculation I had was that Cognos believed that people were already using the analyst objects, and so couldn't connect to them. So the solution would be to ensure that the locks folder was empty (i.e. this problem is similar to the problem suggested below). I haven't been able to test this hypothesis because the macro suddenly started working, but I thought I'd just leave this message for anyone else with the same difficulties.

https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21348073

Regards,

John.

[ericlfg]

Hey John,

Good to hear it's running again.

Next time you have problems, you could also confirm your speculation by going into the File System Monitor in Analyst.  You can get access to this from the Tools menu.  It will reveal what objects are locked as well as how many signons have been consumed.

[John 27182]

Hi all,

Just to follow up, the problem I was having recurred again. I managed to solve it by splitting the analyst macro into many smaller analyst macros and then bundling these into a contributor macro and calling the contributor macro.

Why this worked... I don't know.