Reply to: Unhandled Exception errors and timeouts on application HELP!!

[MPwannadecentincome]

Yes but how much money is the company wasting with people getting frustrated with procedures and having staff sitting around unable to complete work while people mess around with internal politics.

Last week I know we had around 800 branches unable to complete the weeks admin - this will have a negative impact on accounts production and so will disrupt cash flow and the ability to make strategic decisions.

In addition to this staff around the business may become demotivated, frustrated and so will not be in tune with the company strategy going forward.

This will in turn make future projects more difficult to implement due to an inbuilt resistance from previous experiences.

The hidden costs of this may never be calculated but they are a very real threat to any business.

Just my thoughts and experiences anyway.

Valid points - but can anyone show me where it is really any different?

[original PM]

oh well at least you get paid for it!

Yes but how much money is the company wasting with people getting frustrated with procedures and having staff sitting around unable to complete work while people mess around with internal politics.

Last week I know we had around 800 branches unable to complete the weeks admin - this will have a negative impact on accounts production and so will disrupt cash flow and the ability to make strategic decisions.

In addition to this staff around the business may become demotivated, frustrated and so will not be in tune with the company strategy going forward.

This will in turn make future projects more difficult to implement due to an inbuilt resistance from previous experiences.

The hidden costs of this may never be calculated but they are a very real threat to any business.

Just my thoughts and experiences anyway.

[MPwannadecentincome]

yes - up to about 6 months ago the developer and the server administrator sat pretty much next to each other.

unfortunately in the name of progress the server admin bod was moved up to Manchester (from Stoke) and then a load of red tape thrown around him (in the name of some form of crazy It service managment solution) - so we went from having something that worked to something that didn't!

in addition to this we have a load of b*ll*ck jugglers playing politics so if you speak to someone who is not their friend nothing gets done (even if you go through the correct but every changing lengthy and pointless procedures)

anyway it was my first brush with the new server control team and I think they now have the message of what we need and how to support us going forward so I do not foresee any further issues of this nature.

oh well at least you get paid for it!

[lightng]

yes - up to about 6 months ago the developer and the server administrator sat pretty much next to each other.

unfortunately in the name of progress the server admin bod was moved up to Manchester (from Stoke) and then a load of red tape thrown around him (in the name of some form of crazy It service managment solution) - so we went from having something that worked to something that didn't!

in addition to this we have a load of b*ll*ck jugglers playing politics so if you speak to someone who is not their friend nothing gets done (even if you go through the correct but every changing lengthy and pointless procedures)

anyway it was my first brush with the new server control team and I think they now have the message of what we need and how to support us going forward so I do not foresee any further issues of this nature.

Sounds all too familiar. If you'd have said Bangalore instead of Manchester, I'd have sworn we were both working for the same client.

[original PM]

Ahh, the benefits of change control

yes - up to about 6 months ago the developer and the server administrator sat pretty much next to each other.

unfortunately in the name of progress the server admin bod was moved up to Manchester (from Stoke) and then a load of red tape thrown around him (in the name of some form of crazy It service managment solution) - so we went from having something that worked to something that didn't!

in addition to this we have a load of b*ll*ck jugglers playing politics so if you speak to someone who is not their friend nothing gets done (even if you go through the correct but every changing lengthy and pointless procedures)

anyway it was my first brush with the new server control team and I think they now have the message of what we need and how to support us going forward so I do not foresee any further issues of this nature.

[lightng]

Glad you found your solution.

[QUOTE=original PM;759987]With regards to whether something happened 2 weeks ago - apparently yes another databse was migrated onto the same server as ours and some of our resources were 'stolen' this has been resolved.[QUOTE]

Ahh, the benefits of change control

[lightng]

Some good suggestions so far for the little info we have. App, DB, or network - it could be any one or a combination thats causing the problem.

You could also ask devs to isolate the query / stored proc thats running and put through query analyser to look at execution plans. Depending on the outcome, it maybe that your techies can improve things through indexing, updating statistics or rewriting the query involved.

You can try a short-term fix by increasing the watermark (and this is not ideal really). Increase the timeout in the sql connection string or increase the command-timeout; again not enough info to suggest which. The latter will require a small code change and the former probably just a config change (depending on how the app is written).

If your devs, dbas, sysadmins are palming the responsibility off on each other. Get them to work together. Lock them all in a room and don't let them out until they find a solution.

[original PM]

Hi All,

Again thanks for the replies

With regards to whether something happened 2 weeks ago - apparently yes another databse was migrated onto the same server as ours and some of our resources were 'stolen' this has been resolved.

The DBA has been looking at it - apparently he made some tweaks which should speed up.

I will also ask the techy teams to look at the other areas you mentioned to ensure we can nail the reliability of the system.

Thanks again!

[lilelvis2000]

You need to run Perfmon on the SQL Server and determine what's going on first. Check to see how many SQL parses (hard parses) it is doing and how much disk activity and look for excessive numbers of waits and blocking etc.. Determine if the application is:
memory bound, IO bound or CPU bound.

Memory bound - adjust accordingly
IO bound - shift files to faster devices
CPU bould - either recode or install on faster machine

Good luck!

[TheFaQQer]

I seem to be stuck with the server team laying all the blame at the feet of the developers and their code.

Quite right, too.

[TheFaQQer]

No amount of resources is going to stop an unhandled exception - code it properly to handle all exceptions.

More resources MIGHT handle the timeout, it all depends on the underlying cause of the timeout - e.g. if the timeout is caused because of another user locking a record, then no amount of resources is going to make the timeout go away.

[JoJoGabor]

Have you sat down with the DBA and run a SQL trace to see what is happening. Did anything change 2 weeks ago? It could be a network issue as well as a server issue. The trace should show you where the timeout is occurring

[original PM]

apologies I will try and give you some more details - but thanks for the response so far

It is a terminal sevices application running in a .net/sql environment.

The actual application is written in vb.net there are two application servers - one is a standalone server and the other although one is a load balanced cluster of 4 servers (I think the cluster may be a set of virtual servers) We have about 400 people accessing the application at any 1 time.

The SQL server is a virtual server.

However this is a long established application that has been running for about 3 years with no issues - it is only in the last 2 weeks that we have suddenly found these errors - they have gone from being a bit of a niusance to a major issue.

The developers admit their current code is out of date and does need updating (it was written a long time ago and was one of the first applications the developer wrote so it is not very efficeient in the way it polls the database).

The main concensus of opinion however is that an increase in the resources on the SQL server would alleviate the problems - however I seem to be stuck with the server team laying all the blame at the feet of the developers and their code.

This may be the case however this application is due to be rolled out to a further 600+ people over the next 10-12 weeks and regardless of what we do to the code if the servers cannot cope with this main concurrent connections we will still have problems.

Hope this gives further information which may be of use.

[NickFitz]

Timeouts? Sql Server /.NET?

Or it could be Java Servlets and Oracle.

Or PHP and MySQL.

Or classic ASP and Access.

Or Perl CGI and SQLite.

Etcetera...

[lightng]

If I were you I'd have another look at that cartesian join on line 23.