PX ODBC connector properties dialog box missing some pages

[wwilliamson]

I looked around the forum and searched Google for awhile but I haven't found an answer so far.

This issue apparently affects the display of a lot of properties dialog boxes.

The place it affects the most is the ODBC connector properties box. The Stage page is missing a General tab which isn't all that bad. The problem is that it's missing the source tab on the inputs page which makes it impossible to configure the vast majority of features of the connector.

[wwilliamson]

This problem just showed up again on my new laptop. Same hardware, OS, DataStage client.

[suse_dk]

We have experienced the problem a couple of times (two different developers), but with no luck in identifying a root cause.

Solution: re-installation of the client

[wwilliamson]

I did a clean reinstall of the DataStage client and the ODBC connector dialog pages work correctly now. It may be notable that I tried reinstalling without uninstalling first, and that didn't fix the problem.

The only thing I did during the hour that Designer quit working last time was to open the team HP Quality Center site. On a hunch, I tried opening our Quality Center to see if that has something to do with it. I checked beforehand and Designer was functioning fine, but afterward Designer was broken again.

Quality Center installs an IE addon the first time you open it or if the addon is missing. I have no clue why the Quality Center addon would cause this. I deleted the plugin folder but DataStage Designer remains broken. Apparently the addon installation does something outside installing that plugin in the "AppData/Local Low" folder.

[wwilliamson]

This seems to be a problem whether or not you install the full client suite or just Designer/Director.

2011-09-16 - Having DataStage open when QC opens doesn't prevent the issue. I'll test and see if having an ODBC connector dialog box open prevents the change from happening.

[suse_dk]

hmmm... we use HP Quality Center too....

[wwilliamson]

I tried monitoring the QC plugin installation using a process monitoring tool but too many results were returned to really learn anything useful. I imagine that the issue has to do with QC installing an alternate version of some system object that DataStage Designer relies on.

Quality Center provides a separate client which can be downloaded and installed from any QC instance. From what I've heard it's just a rebranded version of IE but it doesn't require installation of the plugin. Hopefully using that will prevent QC from borking my designer client.

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Update 2011-10-03 - I'll update this thread of the aforementioned workaround fixes the issue. Our dev environment isn't responding at the moment.

[wwilliamson]

Installing Quality Center explorer does not fix this issue. The procedure I used to test this was to install QCExplorer followed by the DataStage client and then try to run QCExplorer. During startup, QCE installs components of the QC addon which registers a later version of the EXGrid control which both Quality Center and DataStage Designer rely on.

EXGrid.dll is a standard grid control which apparently is present by default as version 2.0.0.8. The Quality Center addon and QCE installations update this common control to the 3.0.0.9 version. DataStage Designer expects this control to be 2.0.0.8 so if you install designer and then open QC, it breaks your designer installation.

This is a known issue which may be resolved using patch_JR34571_client_windows_8010-8101. I'll test that patch and post the results shortly.

[wwilliamson]

viewtopic.php?p=395460&sid=ffbf81b20636 ... d92f9b4687

[Isonisa]

This problem occurs also in DS 8.5 FB1,2 version.
Does reinstalling FB2 solve the problem or is some other FB available for DS 8.5 ?