January 2014 - Posts

• Do not stop the SharePoint Foundation Web Application service

  When troubleshooting issues on a server where DBXL is installed, DO NOT stop the SharePoint Foundation Web Application service. Stopping this service will remove the IIS sites from the server.  Starting the service recreates the site, but the DBXL install will be lost. Here's a screenshot showing the service in SharePoint Central Administration.     If this should happen to you, you'll find that DBXL is still listed in Control Panel > Program, but nowhere to be found in IIS or in the folder structure. If you try to install or remove DBXL, you'll run into this error:     To resole this,   1. Go to the registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products.   2. Within this location, use the Find operation to locate Qdabra (DBXL).   For example: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\A8E1F369782E6534894469E36122F2D3   3. Delete this key.   4. Reinstall DBXL using the existing databases.   Thankfully, this process re-uses the databases, which means your document types and documents are all retained.   Posted Jan 14 2014, 06:42 PM by ErnestoM with 1 comment(s) Filed under: DBXL

• SharePoint changes DBXL App Pool assignment

  Over the years we've noticed that SharePoint updates may sometimes interfere with DBXL. Typically, correcting the DBXL App Pool identity and/or performing an iisreset fixes the issue. We've noticed, however, that even adding a new web application in SharePoint Central Admin will cause SharePoint to change the DBXL App Pool to the SharePoint App Pool. When you try to access DBXL afterwards, you'll get an error! Here are some screenshots illustrating the issue. 1. Before starting, we notice that the Dbxl App Pool has one application.   2. Then we add a new web app in SharePoint Central Admin. 3. Afterwards, the Dbxl App Pool has no applications!   To fix this, update the QdabraWebService to use the Dbxl App Pool once again, and DBXL will return to its previous, working state. If you have questions or encounter similar issues, please contact Qdabra Support. Posted Jan 10 2014, 01:40 PM by ErnestoM with no comments Filed under: DBXL v2.2

• Submitting to DBXL and detecting errors

  In many DBXL documents published by Qdabra Software, we add a data connection to the SubmitDocument method in the DBXLDocumentService. It should be noted that this web service will not return errors to the user. This means that if the submit should fail, users won't see an error message. And if the form is set to close after submit, the form will close and the data will be lost. How can this be addressed? There are two main options: You could use the DBXLDocumentServiceEx web service instead. This web service is the SAME as DBXLDocumentService, except that it will return error messages. You could submit using the qRules command called SubmitToDbxl. The added benefit of this command is that it returns the new document's DocID, should you need it for anything within the form. Of course, if an error is returned in either scenario, you'll want your form to NOT close, thus you avoid losing the user's data should the submit fail. For example, in the qRules scenario, your rule would be conditioned on SUCCESS=true(). If that condition is satisfied, then the form can be closed safely. Showing error messages to users is risky since it can confuse users and interrupt their work. With some testing of the solution, you'll be able to address any potential issues before the form is launched to a production environment. For errors that slip through the cracks these two methods should catch them. For a step by step description on how to submit to DBXL using qRules, please see this document: http://www.infopathdev.com/files/folders/qrules/entry35303.aspx For an example on how to use the DBXLDocumentServiceEx.asmx web service, please see this previous blog post: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/jo-anne_alfafara/archive/2009/05/15/how-to-report-shredding-errors-to-form-users.aspx If you have questions about either method above, please contact suppport (at) Qdabra (dot) com. Posted Jan 07 2014, 02:29 PM by ErnestoM with no comments Filed under: DBXL, qRules, SubmitToDbxl, SubmitDocument