Noetix 6.0.1 to 6.4.1 Noetix Views Migration ~ Running a Seeded Regeneration

I have been busy working on my Noetix 6.0.1 to 6.4.1 Noetix Views migration and I am supposed to crank through this project pretty quickly. I have been setting up my test environment.  My approach to setting-up my 6.4.1 Noetix View schema is as follows:

• Run a 6.4.1 Noetix Views regeneration “out of the box”on an existing Noetix schema (6.0.1 to be exact).
• Run a 6.4.1 Noetix Views regeneration with all my xu2 hook scripts.
• Run a 6.4.1 Noetix Views regeneration with all my xu5 hook scripts.

With the “out of the box” regeneration, I noticed that popview.sql and ycrcal.sql appear to have bugs (Magnitude supplied me with a corrected popview.sql script).

Here is the error for the ycrcal.sql:

6 insert into noetix_calendar
7 ( effective_date,
8 month,
9 day,
10 year,
11 week_of_year,
12 quarter,
13 julian_day,
14 month_of_year,
15 week_of_month,
16 day_of_month,
17 day_of_week )
18 values
19 ( l_effective_date,
20 TRIM(to_char(l_effective_date,'MONTH')),
21 TRIM(to_char(l_effective_date,'DAY')),
22 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'YYYY')),
23 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'WW')),
24 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'Q')),
25 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'J')),
26 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'MM')),
27 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'W')),
28 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'DD')),
29 to_number(to_char(to_date(l_effective_date,'DD-MON-YY'),'D')));
30 l_effective_date := l_effective_date + 1;
31
32 exit when l_effective_date = to_date('01-JAN-2100','DD-MON-YYYY') ;
33 end loop;
34 commit;
35 end;
36 /
declare
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01830: date format picture ends before converting entire input string
ORA-06512: at line 6

This install script is taking l_effective_date, which is a date and casting it as date (I have not seen that done successfully nor is this a great idea).

Here is a reproduction of that error in a more trivial example:

NOETIX_SYS@erp>select to_date(sysdate,'dd-mon-yyyy')
2 from
3 dual;
select to_date(sysdate,'dd-mon-yyyy')
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-01830: date format picture ends before converting entire input string

When I correct this casting of a date as a date issue, the script looks like this:

6 insert into noetix_calendar
7 ( effective_date,
8 month,
9 day,
10 year,
11 week_of_year,
12 quarter,
13 julian_day,
14 month_of_year,
15 week_of_month,
16 day_of_month,
17 day_of_week )
18 values
19 (l_effective_date,
20 to_char(l_effective_date,'MONTH'),
21 to_char(l_effective_date,'DAY'),
22 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'YYYY')),
23 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'WW')),
24 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'Q')),
25 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'J')),
26 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'MM')),
27 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'W')),
28 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'DD')),
29 to_number(to_char(l_effective_date,'D')));

Presently, I am waiting for Magnitude to acknowledge the problem and fix it.

Capturing Errors in XU2 Scripts Early in Stage 4 of a View Regeneration Using MS PowerShell

--This is a re-post

I posted on this previously and documented a MS DOS command to find errors in my XU2 scripts (here).The xu2 scripts are invoked during stage 4 of the Noetix View Administrator's regeneration process.  This is right after SQL Loader is finished loading seeded template table records. The errors that are thrown during this part of the regeneration are typically associated with constraint errors.  If you examine the constraints that are associated with a given Noetix template table, one can see that they are quite robustly written to help make sure that you do not add a record in an erroneous way.

One can typically examine the root cause of these errors if one looks at this query:

SELECT *
  FROM DBA_CONS_COLUMNS
 WHERE 1          = 1
   AND OWNER      = 'NOETIX_SYS'
   AND TABLE_NAME = 'N_VIEW_COLUMN_TEMPLATES';


Today I wanted to document another way to find these errors.  More than a year ago, I noticed that Microsoft had an updated shell, called PowerShell, and so I placed it on my laptop and did not do anything with it. I noticed that it was quite different from MS Dos and I looked at it for a little bit and talked to some peers.  My peers heard of it, but thought that it really had gained little traction in terms of use by administrators and other IT staff. For one reason or another, I stumbled on the blog, http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/, and it really made me reconsider using this shell environment in lieu of MS DOS where practical.

Anyway, the two main commands one needs to know in this shell are as follows:

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Get-Alias  MS_DOS_Command

Notes on this:  This cmdlet just helps you translate your MS DOS command to the PowerShell cmdlet.

Here is an example:

PS C:\WINDOWS\system32\windowspowershell\v1.0> Get-Alias cd

This returns:

CommandType     Name                                                                                           Definition                                                                                    

-----------     ----                                                                                           ----------                                                                                    

Alias           cd                                                                                             Set-Location         

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other command that is necessary is the following:

Get-Help cmdlet

Today, I will go through how one can invoke a command (well, actually a cmdlet) to find Oracle thrown errors that occur while the Noetix View Administrator is in stage 4 of a regeneration.


First, a little background information on PowerShell.

It is rather nice because it is object oriented and its piping is similar to Unix/Linux.  Specifically, the piping can return objects and then the next cmdlet (that is what they call their commands in this new shell) manipulates it, one object at a time through the pipe kind of like an embedded function.  This is very dissimilar to MS DOS where it completes the first command and then pushes the result set to the next command.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyways, I use this shell as my main shell that I use for various tasks.  Here is my cmdlet to watch for errors being thrown right before GUI prompt for the APPS password (which is right after the wnoetxu2.sql script has run):

Get-ChildItem -Path "\\cmntx02\NoetixViews 6.0.1 - ERP\Installs\NOETIX_SYS_erpdev" -Filter "*xu2.lst" | Select-String -pattern "ORA-"

Explanation: 

  

  The Get-ChildItem cmdlet gets the items in one or more specified locations. In this context it obtains all the xu2.lst spooled files and pipes the results to the Select-String cmdlet which finds matches to the pattern, "ORA-".

I invoke this script on my laptop and it peruses the files in the path I have identified.  I suppose you might take a look at this script and think; I will never type a path that long!  Well, if you are not aware, you can drag a file from MS explorer to your shell environment and Windows will “type it in” for you.