Focal Point
404 errors on syscolum.xsl

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May 13, 2008, 06:43 PM
Janice
404 errors on syscolum.xsl
I am not sure if this is a PMF issue or an operational report problem, but the customer is seeing 404 errors on their reporting server (7.6.4 WF and 4.1 PMF). A case has been opened on Tech Support. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!


WF 8.09
May 13, 2008, 06:44 PM
Janice
oops sorry. That was 4.2 of PMF


WF 8.09
May 13, 2008, 08:05 PM
Bob Jude Ferrante
syscolum is an internal metadata query on the WebFOCUS server.

We'll look at the case and advise. Thanks for the headsup.


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!

May 13, 2008, 08:33 PM
Janice
Bob, your suggestion to check the pmfdata folder and the a_hostname.fex was an excellent one. That is where the issue resided. Thanks again for coming through!

Janice


WF 8.09
May 13, 2008, 11:29 PM
Bob Jude Ferrante
For all those who do not know, a_hostname.fex in the pmfdata folder is a PMF/PMM configuration file, written out with the correct web server name by the PMF/PMM installer.

If the file is applied without the installer, it contains the web server "kaplan" as the host, which is of course going to cause problems when someone wants to run an operational report, since that's the http server PMF/PMM will assume for operational reports; plus PMF/PMF's AJAX code also uses that defined web server to make its queries - and PMF has a ton of AJAX code in it.

But since PMF/PMM is a WebFOCUS application, the temptation is very strong to copy app components in manually. We've actually encouraged that in the past, especially when patching issues, but we're now starting to have a change of heart. Starting with V5 we recommend all users run the installer to apply service packs - it will ensure a much higher factor of safety.


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!

May 15, 2008, 08:32 AM
Mike Putnam
We modified the a_hostname.fex as instructed, but the 404 errors persist at about the rate of the number of visits to PMF (actually a few more). Once again, the users are not seeing the errors, but we wonder if it is impacting performance in some way. Thanks for your help.
May 15, 2008, 09:30 AM
Bob Jude Ferrante
We're happy to help.

It's highly doubtful these are affecting performance. However, where are you seeing these errors? What tool is showing them to you?

Do you have a log or a trace of some kind that shows the errors? Can you send them to customer support?


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!

May 28, 2008, 06:16 PM
Bob Jude Ferrante
Following up on this, we found that our administrator and author tabs had some old code in them that was asking for this page. Although it does not affect Web server performance or application performance, we have removed the code from the newest version of PMF and it will be removed, moving onward. You can also modify the files:

adnavbar.htm
aunavbar.htm
pmm_adnavbar.htm

and remove the quotes and the string "syscolum.xsl"

it's a safe change; we tested it here and it checks out.

all best


Bob Jude Ferrante
Director of Business and Development
WebFOCUS Performance Management
Bob_Ferrante@ibi.com
917-339-5105

I'll take any questions about PMF - business or technical - anytime!