Preliminary Remote Call questions

Wonderful collection of Preliminary Remote Call questions Oracle asks to check a customer before reaching out to Oracle GSC.

1) Are you logged in 2-Tier? The process is running/failing on the Client.

2) Are you logged in in 3-tier? The process is running/failing on the AppServer.

3) Are you logged via Web (PIA)? In this case the process is running/failing on the AppServer.

4) Is the Remote Call service functioning?

5) Check if the COBOL program (i.e. PTPTEDIT) can be run directly from MS-DOS on the NT AppServer box or directly from the Unix Command Line on the Unix AppServer box?

6) Re-run ALL of the Stored Statements (STORE*.DMS scripts)

7) Re-compile ALL of the COBOL programs.

8) If you are still experiencing difficulties after re-running the Stored Statements and re-compiling the COBOL programs -- for all cblbin directories, set the Remote Call Redirect Output flag and re-run the process.

Troubleshooting tips for Remote Call errors in two and three tier.
Suggestion:
Remote Call errors are very generic. They usually say "could not start child program..." or "child program did not complete...". These messages just mean that the Remote Call process could not finish normally. They don't really provide much insight to the actual problem. However, there is a way to determine the problem (for PeopleTools 7 and greater).

If running a Remote Call process in TWO TIER, on the Remote Call tab of the Configuration Manager is a "Remote Call Redirect Output" flag. Check the flag and rerun the Remote Call process. This will create two files in your %TEMP% directory, one ending with .out, the other with .err (program-name_oprid.out and program-name_oprid.err). The .program-name_oprid.out file will more than likely contain the reason why the process didn't complete successfully.

If running a Remote Call process in 3-Tier or via web browser, the COBOL process runs on the Application Server. Therefore, the same flag is set, but this time in the Application Server configuration ($PS_HOME/appserv//psappsrv.cfg). The parameter RCCBL Redirect (Remote Call child process output redirection) is defaulted to 0. If it is changed to 1 (RCCBL Redirect=1) and the AppServer re-booted, the same two files will be written to the Application Server logs directory ($PS_HOME/appserv//logs), providing additional information as to why the Remote Call process failed.

NOTE: When running a Unicode database the parameter RCCBL PRDBIN needs to be set. The line delivered -- %PS_HOME%\cblbinU is only an example, it may not be your actual path. Customer used %PS_HOME%/cblbin -- NOT %PS_HOME%\cblbinU. No U and / not \.

9) Some time trouble shooting will require a cobsql trace file.
 
To make a long story short... Check #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5 from above, re-load the Stored Statements and re-compile the COBOL programs, check the trace file and take necessary action. If nothing works reach out to Oracle GSC.