VST _dbstatus missing

[RennegadeX]

I am running into an issue where the _dbstatus VST seems to go missing. This started happening for our customers on Progress 11. I was wondering if anybody else had this issue.

Doing a backup and restore fixes the problem. Also, a builddb fixes the issues. There is also a proutil updatevst. This is suppose to work with replicated databases but it doesn't.

We have a large customer with replication that has this issue and we don't want to rebuild replication. I have a case open with progress but it is hard to identify were the _dbstatus goes missing.

I was hoping someone else had this issue and knew what causes it.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

Which specific releases does this happen with?

 

[TheMadDBA]

That seems excessively strange. I could almost imagine a scenario where it would happen with a new VST... but _DBStatus has been around for quite some time now.

You are saying it "seems to go missing". What exactly does that mean? Is it really missing or does code blow up when trying to access it? Source or Target?

proutil updatevst does work with replication (at least when I tested it) as long as both databases are down and you run the updatevst on the source.

 

[TomBascom]

It is a real thing. And very mysterious.

SFAIK nobody knows why it happens.

Fortunately it is relatively rare.

 

[TheMadDBA]

Do you know any more details Tom? I am curious as to what is exactly happening... or more appropriately what are the exact symptoms (since we don't know the cause).

 

[Cringer]

https://community.progress.com/community_groups/openedge_rdbms/f/18/t/3739.aspx
Defect OE00232030
https://progresscustomersupport-sur.../000037915?q=_dbstatus&l=en_US&fs=Search&pn=1

 

[TheMadDBA]

Thanks

From that description it makes a lot more sense. The VST structure disappearing from the DB would be much weirder imo.

Interesting that a prostrct repair seems to "fix" it though.

 

[TomBascom]

Mostly just what is in the thread that Cringer linked to. There was also a PEG thread around the same time frame where George chipped in but I don't recall that he had any more insight into why it happens. Just agreement that, yes, it sometimes happens.

I've had to put some defensive coding into ProTop as a result

Our original poster refers to "Progress 11" but omits the minor version and service pack info -- that might be relevant. FWIW I have not personally seen it in recent releases.

 

[RennegadeX]

The version that are 10.2B08 and 11.3.2.

I copied one of the databases that has the _dbstatus missing and have been running test against it to see what will recreate the VST.

prostrct builddb - Works
prostrct remove ai - Works
prostrct add - Does not work
proutil updatevst - Does not work
prostrct repair - Does not work
backup and restore - Works

I am still doing more testing.