Symptoms
When starting the ‘Adaptive Server Anywhere - OfficeTalk’ service in the Services applet in Control Panel (Administrative Tools). The service does not start or hangs. No SQL icon appears in the taskbar notification area.
Resolution
Stop all instances of the ASA database server and then run it manually, as an executable. Any errors will be then be directly reported. The action required will depend on the error that is reported. Refer to the detailed instructions below
More Info
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about editing the registry. Before you edit the registry, make sure you understand how to restore it if a problem occurs.
Detail
Open Task Manager, click on the Processes tab and check the Show processes from all users option. Select the dbsrv9 process and click End Process. (NB. If you are using Windows 2000 you may be presented with an Access Denied error message. In this case disable the service and reboot the computer.)
In order to start the registry editor click Start, Run, type regedit and press enter.
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesASANYs_OfficeTalk Parameters
This contains string value called ‘parameters’ set to, for example,
-c 512M -n OTDB “C:otalkotsqldb.db”
where
-c Set the initial memory reserved for caching database pages and other server information.
-n specify the name of the database server, this is normally OTDB
“C:otalkotsqldb.db” Path and filename of the database to start. This is normally %systemdrive%Otalkotsqldb.db
NB The database must not be referenced by a mapped drive, whether local to the system or not. This is because the database server is started as a service which initially runs before any network drive mappings are created.
If the parameters value does not exist, create it as above and set the database name and path as required.
If you already have a parameters value, check that the path and database name are correct and that the file exists as specified. Examine the file: check that it is a size suitable for the data in your database and that the modified and creation times are feasible. If the database does not exist at that location, then either change the path of the database or move the database file.
Start the database server manually, as follows. Navigate to %ProgramFiles%OfficeTalk SQL Anywhere and open dbsrv9.exe. In the database name field, enter the path and filename of your database as entered in the parameters key (the part in quotes). For the server name type otdb and click on the OK button.
Any further action required will depend on any error messages encountered:
Share violation: another process may be using the file
The database file may be in use by another database server running on this computer. Open Task Manager, click on the Processes tab, check the option ‘Show processes for all users’, and check that there are no other instances of dbsrv9 running.
If OfficeTalk has been upgraded from OfficeTalk 4.0 with ASA 8, then the database server may have been previously started from a shortcut on the desktop. This is no longer required. The database server should be run as a service.
A database server with that name has already started
This particular computer or another computer on the network is already running a database server with the name OTDB. This may be because the main OfficeTalk setup has been run on additional computers. The setup downloaded from our website should only be run on one computer, the server. All other client computers must run the setup.exe program in the otalksetup32 folder on the server.
The best way to locate a rogue database server is with a utility called DBLocate. DBLocate is shipped with the Sybase Central download. Please refer to FAQ#807 for more information.
Once Sybase Central has been downloaded and installed, open a command prompt in the C: drive and set the path to C:SybaseOTSQL Anywhere 9win32. Type dblocate to run the utility. This utility will display the name of the computer with the database server running; you may now close the database server on that particular computer.
Cannot open transaction log file — No such file or directory
If this error message is displayed or indeed any other error message relevant to the transaction log file, the datab