Overview
When working with m-Power it can happen where an application does not behave as expecting or the data returned to the screen doesn’t appear right. This post will serve to provide a general guide on how to troubleshoot your own applications.
In the next section, various questions or issues will be listed with information on how to resolve an issue.
Troubleshooting
Issue: My application is showing the wrong data
It’s important to remember that m-Power applications are pulling information from a licensed database. It is more likely than not that the information in the database is correct, but rather an ill-design query is returning the wrong data.
Use the Enable Debugging property in your Edit Properties to see the SQL query behind the scenes. Alternatively, you can just run the application, and then pass in debug=1 as a URL parameter.
The debug statement will provide you with the SQL statement that m-Power runs on the database. You can copy this statement, and run it directly on the database. This will show you the exact data that m-Power is pulling in, as well as allow you to troubleshoot any other issues with the data.
Issue: My application is broken.
If the application is broken, copy the application to a new number, and build it. Run it immediately, before adding any custom work in m-Painter. Does the application work now? Often, improper painting in m-Painter can cause applications to break.
Alternatively, if your application still doesn’t work, try removing components once by one until you can narrow down what is causing the issue. Here are some examples:
- If your application calls external business logic via an External Objects, remove these one at a time, rebuilding the application after each one is removed. If the application works, you can narrow down the problem to a specific External Object.
- If your application has Workflow Designer activity, try to remove various actions one a time. Does the application only fail at a certain action or set of conditions?
- One a time, remove calculations, filters, or other additional options that have been added to the Data Model.
Issue: My application is not working the way it should — OR — my m-Power is really slow.
Have you checked the Tomcat logs for errors or uncompleted queries? You can find the logs on your m-Power server, in \m-power\tomcat\logs. If you don’t have access to the server, you may want to speak to your server administrator about implementing the Tomcat Logger. The Tomcat Logger allows you to view the Tomcat logs directly in your web browser, so that once it’s installed, you won’t need to access the server again to view the logs.
Issue: I’ve made some changes in m-Power, but I’m not seeing them picked up.
Start by clearing your cache. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, completely close out your browser, and try again. Lastly, it is possible that your change requires a Tomcat restart to be picked up. Restart Tomcat, and try again.
Issue: My application works great in development, but doesn’t work in production.
Have you promoted your application properly— including promoting your web.xml file and restarting the production Tomcat?
- Have you promoted any auxiliary applications or objects, like Web 2.0 Options Lists, Quick Lists, stylesheet changes, Row Level security objects, etc. along with this application?
If so, it is possible that your development version of m-Power and production version of m-Power are at two different release dates. To check this, look at the date modified for the mrcapps.jar file located in \m-power\mrcjava\WEB-INF\lib. You will find this file in both production and development. Are the dates and files sizes the same? If not, you most likely need to update your versions so that they are at the same release.