FM Publish Fatal Error

[wyconian]

Hey gurus

I've got an FM model which I've pointed to my dev environment. It all verifies OK and I can retrieve data from the database.  But when I go to publish it O get a fatal error and the app closes.  Everything I've tried has failed to resolve the issue.

The prod model (which this is based on) works fine.

The error message is attached.

Anyone come against this before and have a solution?

Thanks for your help.

[cognostechie]

A FM Model, at any time, is connected to TWO databases.

1- The database that has the data which your query subjects show
2 - The Content Store database which will receive the package from the FM Model.

How did you point it to the DEV environment? Is the model physically still on the PROD server or copied over to the DEV server? FM is a development tool and normally you would have it only on the DEV environment without having it on the PROD environment. The PROD and DEV would have the same data sources with the same name but pointed to different databases.

You can make a brand new FM Model with only one Query Subject and try to publish a package. See where the package goes first (DEV or PROD). If it works, then the connectivity to the Content Store is ok (you should also get an error when opening/creating the model if their is no connectivity).

[wyconian]

Thanks CT

I've got a bit of a wierd set up (at least I think it's a little wierd).

All the apps (DM, FM, Transformer etc) are on the app server (app7).  There is only 1 install of everything.  I've then got 2 database servers, Dbase1 is for prod, I'm trying to make Dbase2 into the dev environment.

The model in prod works fine.  I took a copy of the prod model, changed the data  source to point to Dbase2 (dev db).  The data source in dev and prod has the same name in FM but links to different data sources in the portal (I'm trying to make the model portable, something my predecessor didn't think about).

In the dev model everything verifies OK and I can retrieve data from the database query subjects against Dbase2.  But for some reason I'm not able to publish any of the packages in the dev model.   I tried creating a new model from scratch against the dev datasource, that published OK.

I thought it was possibly an issue with permissions against the content store but that all looks OK.

I'm completely stumped.  Any other ideas (thanks for your help).

[blom0344]

FM uses it's own configuration settings to work with exactly 1 content store (Cognos instance) Using 1 installation to publish to 2 different environments would demand that you BOTH change config setting and rebuild the encryption involved. This is NOT best practice and hardly worth the hazzle.

Publish to your develop environment and use these packages through the standard export/import routine to get them into other Cognos instances (like production..)

[wyconian]

Thanks Blom

I possibly over exagerated the 2 environments thing.  I've got 2 databases (SQL Server 2008) on different servers, one for prod, the other for dev.  But there's only 1 portal so I would have thought that FM would be publishing packages to 1 location regardless of the datasource.

That led me to think that maybe the log on for the datasource didn't have access to the content store.  So I've added the logonto the content store but I'm still getting the error and the app dies.

I guess what I should have said is; I've got 1 environment (portal), 2 different datasources (pointing to SQL Server2008 Dbs on differnent servers).

The wierd thing is I can create a new model based on the dev datasource and publish it fine.

Really not sure what to do apart from rebuild the model from scratch :(

[Lynn]

I had that issue when working on FM on the server (remote desktop to the server where FM is installed) after they moved to a newer Windows OS (2008 maybe?)....anyway, a user with admin privileges on the box was able to successfully publish, but I could not. I also got the error if I tested a query subject that had an error (one without an error didn't throw the error). Turned out to be permissions somewhere that FM was trying to write something. I can ask our admin on Monday if she recalls the particulars.

If you are working on FM installed on the server it might be worth seeing if an admin user has the same issue trying to publish your package.

[blom0344]

With 2008 as server you may expect all kinds of trouble not previously met with older server versions. You need to make sure that writing to the filesystem is allowed. You can also test whether opening an executable (as FM) with the 'run as' administrator makes a difference.

By the way, changing the datasource is not needed. (perhaps = even the cause) It is simply a matter of using another connection assigned to the datasource. We literally have dozens of connections for the same contentstore datasource

[bi4u2]

You can use the same data source connection for multiple versions of the database. You set up additional connections under the main datasource name. At run time you select whether you want to see 'DEV' or 'PROD' database.

Also, sometimes it helps on version 10 to right-click on Start/IBM Framework Manager/Run As Administrator - even if you are already an admin.

[cognostechie]

Thanks Blom

I possibly over exagerated the 2 environments thing.  I've got 2 databases (SQL Server 2008) on different servers, one for prod, the other for dev.  But there's only 1 portal so I would have thought that FM would be publishing packages to 1 location regardless of the datasource.

That led me to think that maybe the log on for the datasource didn't have access to the content store.  So I've added the logonto the content store but I'm still getting the error and the app dies.

I guess what I should have said is; I've got 1 environment (portal), 2 different datasources (pointing to SQL Server2008 Dbs on differnent servers).

The wierd thing is I can create a new model based on the dev datasource and publish it fine.

Really not sure what to do apart from rebuild the model from scratch :(

So in that scenario, you can open the model, click on the Data Source and just change the Content Manager Data Source property to the Data Source that points to your DEV database. That will let you publish the package. I just did it and it works.

[wyconian]

Thanks everyone

Lynne - I can publish other models so I'm not sure it's an admin permissions thing.

CT - That's exactly what I did but for some reason I can't publish the model from this datasource :(

[CognosPaul]

I've been running into a similar bug occasionally. For me it manifests when attempting to delete objects from the model, but perhaps it has the same cause.

Open the model.xml in notepad++ (or a similar XML editor), and use the XML Tools plugin to add line breaks and indent the XML (CTRL - ALT - SHIFT - B).

Collapse everything with ALT-0.

Expand project, securityViews and packages. When I get that error, it's because there are multiple securityViews with the same name. There should be the same number of securityViews as packages. Deleting the excess views fixes the problem. If this doesn't solve it, you may have other XML errors. Try comparing the dev and prod versions (np++ has a nice compare tool).

[wyconian]

Thanks PaulM

I had a look and it all looked OK there was just 1 security view for each package.

As if I wasn't confused enough; I created a new model and used the metadata wizard to import everything from the previous model.  That still refused to publish anything.  But I added a new package with query subjects (rather than alias shortcuts), that package published OK and now the other packages publish OK as well.

I have no idea what's going on but at least I can now publish packages again.  I've raised a call with IBM to try to figure out what was going on.

Thanks for your help everyone :)

[CognosPaul]

Did you try comparing the PROD and DEV versions? Maybe there was some other corruption going on. I'm glad to hear that it works now.