We are running 2 versions of U2WebDE (AKA Redback)

• 4.4.3
• 5.3.0

on our Linux box.  Both versions have 3 environments that connect to our UniData accounts:

• DEV - used by programmers (me) to write new stuff
• PILOT - used by super-users to test changes prior to loading to LIVE
• LIVE - available to anyone who can access the web pages

  We have been smoothly running this way from over a year with the plan to phase out the old version (4.4.3) by the end of the year.

Yesterday, a web page in our PILOT (user testing) environment started to fail - hard!  The lines of the web page making the call are as follows:

accnt = Application("ERPAccount")
userid = Application("Ruser")
passwd = Application("Rpass")
set oOrder=CreateObject("RedBack.RedObject")
oOrder.Open2 accnt,"SF:oOrder",userid,passwd

The oOrder.Open2 is failing hard enough that I have to reboot IIS to get control back.

I see no errors in the IIS logs or the Redback logs.

Nobody has changed anything in the web pages or back end logic (it's just me - I did not change anything except to figure out which line was failing).

The web page is 100% identical to the web pages in the DEV and LIVE and those are working just fine (we take orders all day long in LIVE).

Does anyone have any thoughts or clues of what I should look for to figure out what is suddenly failing?

JRI

Hi John,

If it's a stable app that's been running for some time, I always like to start by blaming the data.  If the end user is able to cut and paste for the parameters, there's always a chance that a weird character was introduced that may cause a problem for an RBO. Have you reproduced the error yourself? Hope this helps.

Mark,

I do not think the data is the issue, but I did check that before my original post.  The parameters to make the connection are stored in the global.asa file which is unavailable to the users, they should be static.

To debug this, I added a redirect command just prior to the Open2 command to go to my personal web page, passing the accnt, userid and passwd in the URL to see what it would have passed to the Open2 command.  They were exactly what they should be.

Yes, I was able to re-create this condition.  Every time.  Locked up the web site and required a reboot of IIS plus no errors recorded in the IIS logs or the Redback logs.

John,

There are a number of possibilities. For some context:

• Is this WebDE 4 or 5 that has an issue - or both? 
• If WebDE 5 are you using Connection Pooling ?
• Monitor the size of IIS in memory over time - is it leaking memory?
• Are you using SB/XA behind some of the WebDE method calls? If so - could you be running out of SB/XA license slots?

While unusual to need adjustment, there are tuneable parameters in IIS regarding garbage collection, heap and application pools. It would be useful to have a separate IIS client instance you can test with when a problem occurs to isolate whether the issue is specific to IIS only or is an interaction between IIS and WebDE.

Regards,

JJ