Automic Workload Automation

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Workflow starts completely unrelated object

  • 1.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 04, 2017 09:52 AM
    In a recent comment, I mentioned something that happened a few times: a workflow executed objects that it should not have executed. The objects executed are are not in the workflow. They are not mentioned in the workflow. (I exported to XML to double-check this.) They are not even in the same folder. Unfortunately, I had tracing turned off, and Automic Support was unable to explain the reason for the problem. I am unable to reproduce the problem. (And considering the seriousness of the problem, this is mostly a good thing; but it does make troubleshooting difficult.)

    Has anyone ever seen an instance of an object like a JOBP executing a completely unrelated object?


  • 2.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 04, 2017 10:06 AM
    Never encountered this myself, no (although I'm still using v9 at the moment).
    How did you determine that the workflow kicked off these objects?  I'm guessing they showed up as child tasks in stats?


  • 3.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 04, 2017 10:14 AM
    Daryl Brown said:
    Never encountered this myself, no (although I'm still using v9 at the moment).
    How did you determine that the workflow kicked off these objects?  I'm guessing they showed up as child tasks in stats?
    Yup. The parent-child relationships were clear. Fortunately, this happened in an experimental system, and the child objects ended in error (because required variables were not set).


  • 4.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 04, 2017 12:51 PM
    Did the workflow's activation report say anything about activating these tasks?

    Nothing unusual was going on in the database at the time, was there?


  • 5.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 04, 2017 12:54 PM
    Did the workflow's activation report say anything about activating these tasks?
    Yes.
    Nothing unusual was going on in the database at the time, was there?
    Not that I know of, no.



  • 6.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 04, 2017 08:01 PM
    I remember an issue way back in v9 when you clicked on the execute button the focus inside the Java UI was still on the previous object highlighted. This might explain the behavior, or does the object really show a workflow as its parent?


  • 7.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Oct 05, 2017 02:24 AM
    Alexander Trenker wrote:
    I remember an issue way back in v9 when you clicked on the execute button the focus inside the Java UI was still on the previous object highlighted. This might explain the behavior, or does the object really show a workflow as its parent?
    It happened in v12, with a somewhat complicated workflow with a prompt set whose defaults are set using EXEC VARAs. This scenario is rife with problems. I was actively developing this workflow, as well as a second, unrelated one. The objects mistakenly executed by three runs of the first workflow were two SQL jobs in the second workflow.

    I had recently performed XML exports & imports of both workflows. I suspect the problem might be related to this fact. Perhaps there is a period of time, shortly after an XML import has completed, when the imported objects have not been fully written to the database, and are not ready to be used. If you’re interested, the incident is INC00137596.


  • 8.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Feb 12, 2018 10:44 AM
    This just happened again, and I think I learned more about the cause. I was making many changes to a bunch of inter-dependent objects, including duplicating and renaming objects. Often, the replace uses dialog box would simply not appear, so I replaced many object references manually. The little double-arrow indicator in the upper right-hand corner (4v7bh2g45ay1.png) was animating continually, as though the AE were still trying to catch up on some of the back-end tasks related to the changes I had been making.

    I think the AE had not completed committing changes to the objects, and some object references were still pointing to the old objects. There was no indication in the objects as visible in the JUI that anything was amiss though, so I did not see the problem until I had executed the objects. After a few minutes, without making any changes, I ran the objects again. This time they worked as expected.

    Very troubling.


  • 9.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Feb 12, 2018 11:18 AM
    Ooh, and now there’s a PRPT that can no longer be opened. Any attempt to open it in the JUI results in one minute of apparent AE activity, follow by nothing. Looking in the trace, I see instances of  messages 4006566 and 4006504. Neither of these messages is documented.

    I tried opening this PRPT object in the AWI and got the same result: about a minute of progress indicator follow by an error message:
    Error during XRequest com.uc4.webui.communication.requests.OpenObjectAdapter
    I can duplicate the object and edit the duplicate object without any problem. Attempting to export the object to XML though results in the same problem. Also, I cannot delete the object.  :#


  • 10.  Workflow starts completely unrelated object

    Posted Feb 13, 2018 04:46 AM
    When I arrived at the office this morning, I saw that 21 work processes had hung completely during the night. They were grayed-out in System Overview, and refused to stop when I shut down the AE. I had to kill them with kill -9. For what it’s worth, once I had completely stopped and restarted the AE, I was able to open, edit, and delete the previously troublesome PRPT object. I don’t know if the WP hang problem is related to the problem with the PRPT.

    Anyway, a bunch of errors appeared in the logs, including DB deadlocks and constraint violations. I opened INC00220074                                                 about this.