Troubleshooting the Data Warehouse Analytics System

For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.

This topic includes information about how to troubleshoot Data Warehouse errors.

Commerce Server Data Warehouse debugging tool

CSDWDbgSrv.exe, a Commerce Server Data Warehouse debugging tool, is included with Commerce Server. This tool lets you see trace output from the OLE DB Provider for Commerce Server. If you append –f traceoutput to the file name, the tool will log all output to a file that has a timestamp appended to the log file name. We recommend that you use CSDWDbgSrv.exe whenever you modify the OLE DB Provider schema.

To run CSDWDBGSRV.EXE, open a Command Prompt window, and type the following command:

<drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Enterprise Servers\Commerce Server\CSDWDbgSrv.exe -f traceoutput

This will create a file whose file name will have 'traceoutput' as a prefix, a time stamp as the suffix, and .txt as the extension. For example, traceoutput-0904-163027-23011.txt would be a trace created on September 4 at 4:30.

You can obtain additional information about import issues with the command:

<drive>:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Enterprise Servers\Commerce Server\CSDWDbgSrv.exe Set TRACESYNC=T > c:\dtsimport.txt

This will create the file 'dtsimport.txt' in the C: root directory. The file will contain trace information about the import process.

Report Parameter Validation Failure

Generally, Data Warehouse reports do not mask bad data. If you see the following text when running a report, "Parameter validation failed. It is not possible to provide valid values for all parameters. (rsParameterError)", it is most likely caused by data errors in the Data Warehouse. You will have to check for NULL values in the Data Warehouse and fix the data for the reports to be successful.

To make the Reports appear with some bad data, follow these steps:

  1. In the Report Manager, click Show Details.

  2. Click Edit button for the report.

  3. Click Parameters on the left pane.

  4. Override the defaults for the parameters.

This should override the defaults parameters that are queried from the database. This will mask problems with the data that the parameters are using, for example: Date_Registered Field is null in the RegisteredUser table.

Reports no longer connect to the database

If you change a database connection string in Commerce Server Manager, you must update any affected reports with the new connection string.

You can use the Reports Installer to reinstall reports that access the database, or you can use SQL Server Reporting Services to update each report data source object that uses the new connection information. For more information about how to run the Reports Installer, see Packaging Data Warehouse Reports for Deployment.

See Also

Other Resources

Developing with the Data Warehouse Analytics System