Technical Blog Post
Abstract
Intermittent Object Not Found (for SI DB objects) Errors
Body
I had a complex PMR recently where their SQL Server database was getting "Object not found" errors
when trying to access objects in the SI schema. This was odd, because it wasn't happening across
the board. Had it been happening reliably, it most likely would have been a matter of setting
permissions or the default database correctly. The only consistency we could find between various
instances of the issue occurring was that it seemed to be restricted to one session.
We'd see errors like this: "Invalid object name 'WORKFLOW_CONTEXT'. Error from Listener".
Given that WORKFLOW_CONTEXT is an important part of the SI schema, the database was not corrupt, and
data processing was not doing its best impression of crash & burn, we were unable to locate a single
cause.
After our customer conferred with Microsoft, the issue was located. What was happening was that one
of the users was utilizing SQL Manager (Operations > System > Support Tools > SQL Manager), and at the
beginning of the statement was using the USE (Transact-SQL) command to reference a different database
from the SI database, rather than explicitly addressing it using the [database].[object name] syntax.
This changed the default database for the session, to the new database. Since SQL Manager uses the
system pool, this caused the connection to change the database it was pointing to, which was not its
default database. Once the default database was changed, the SI objects were not found, and BPs would
fail due to being unable to persist information.
To prevent this sort of thing from happening, make sure your non-admin users do not have permissions
to use SQL Manager. In addition, please do not use SQL Manager for accessing other databases, if at
all possible.
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UID
ibm11121703