Deploy Report Service

Post Reply
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

Good morning,

I am trying for the first time to publish my model, but I get the error:

"Failed to send snapshot to the Report Service :
No response from the Report Service at this URL."

Do I have to configure the Report Service itself in some way? So far, I have only typed in a destination URL and have not configured anything else.
Any advice is much appreciated,
Steve Bell
User avatar
jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Hi Steve.

The Report Service is part of the Essential Viewer, so the first thing to check is that you have installed that successfully. Viewer is a web application that runs in your favourite Java web application server, typically Apache Tomcat.

So, to check that all is well with Viewer, ensure that you get a sensible response (i.e. the homepage) by using the following URL in your web browser:
http://<YOUR WEB APP SERVER HOST>:8080/essential_viewer
Replace <YOUR WEB APP SERVER HOST> with the hostname of the server on which you have installed and deployed Essential Viewer. For example, if you have performed a stand-alone installation and everything is on the same physical machine, then you can use:
Assuming that all is well with the Essential Viewer installation, we should then check the URL for the Report Service that the publishing tab uses. Out of the box, this is configured for a stand-alone installation, so looks for the Report Service running on 'localhost'.
If you have deployed Essential Viewer to another location, replace 'localhost' with (preferably) the hostname or the IP address of the server on which Essential Viewer is running in Tomcat. e.g. if I have server called 'essentialserver' then the Report Service URL that I use in the tab would be:
You only need to configure the Report Service if you have installed Viewer on a remote server and/or changed the default port for Tomcat. However, the only configuration that would then be required is to change the Report Service URL according, as I've shown above.

Check that you have got Tomcat running and that Essential Viewer is deployed successfully and let me know how you get on and we can take it from there.

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

Good morning Jonathan;
Thank you for your prompt and thorough response.

I followed your suggestions and found out that there was a problem installing Tomcat. I now have Tomcat running and I no longer get the error when I click on "Publish Repository" in EAM.

I open a browser (I tried IE8 and Firefox), navigate to
http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer/
but I'm still getting an empty (pure white) screen. I will keep working on this.... I know I'm close.
I truly appreciate your help and advice Jonathan. Thanks again.
Steve
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

Following up on this, I am still working on resolving the issue that I only get a blank white screen when I open the browser to view reports on my standalone installation. Here's where I am:

1. EAM reports that the repository was published successfully to http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer/
2. Tomcat is running and their splash page is visible in the browser when I naviagate to http://localhost:8080/
I wonder if it's possible that the file 'essential_viewer.war' is in the right place? It is located in the JRE_HOME path, but should it be in a specific directory? Should tomcat be up and running when I install EAM and the viewer?
I am at a loss as to why I can't make it this last mile and view reports in EAM.
Again, I appreciate any insights you can provide.
Steve
User avatar
neil.walsh
Posts: 444
Joined: 16 Feb 2009, 13:45
Contact:

quick one...

I think the 'essential_viewer.war' needs to be in the web apps folder. from there Tomcat should deploy the app and a folder should automatically appear called essential_viewer.

Yes Tomcat needs to be running...

Cheers

Neil
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

Much appreciated Neil;

I have the .war file in the webapps folder, and I do see the essential_viewer folder (also in the webapps folder).

I confirmed that Tomcat is running.

I just went through a different software issue this morning with Windows 7. Often, it wants you to 'run as administrator', but there seems to be no predetermined way to know when to run software as administrator or as a regular user.
Are you aware of any issues with a 64-bit OS that could be causing this? It is frustrating, because I believe that I am so close (i.e. no errors, just an empty screen).
I introduced our management to EAM last week, so it will be handy to be able to show them the reports.
User avatar
jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Hi Steve,

It may be worth attempting to publish the repository from the Essential Architecture Publishing tab to Essential Viewer again and see if that gives you the expected home page at http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer.

The fact that you are able to publish successfully from the Protege end means that you have Essential Viewer installed successfully. A blank page may mean that the either the XML repository snapshot is empty / truncated or that there may be some characters in the repository that are not permitted in XML.

There is a file that you will find in <your tomcat folder>/webapps/essential_viewer, called 'reportXML.xml'. This is where the XML snapshot is saved. Check that this file is not 0KB in size. If it is 0KB, try re-publishing your repository from the Protege environment.

If this is not the problem, we need to have a look in the Tomcat logs - in particular 'catalina.out' or 'stdout_20111031.log' that you will find in <your_tomcat folder>/logs. Let me know any error messages that might have been reported there.

On the permissions, thing, Windows 7 and Windows 2008 have turned up the security and this can cause some problems with Tomcat, which are quite widely reported on the web. However, I think it's likely that you may have to run as Administrator to start the Tomcat service and this may depend on which user you have configured Tomcat to run as - e.g. 'System'. Often it is possible to right-click and choose 'Run As Administrator' rather than explicitly log in as admin.

Let me know about the re-publish / any error messages in the Tomcat logs

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

Hi Jonathan;
Your time and insights on this are invaluable.
To address your points:
a) Yes, publishing the repository gives me the expected home page. My report service URL shows as " http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer/reportService" and I'm trying to view it at "http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer/. Grasping at straws a little, Tomcat is installed in my Documents folder, not in Program files. However, I can confirm Tomcat is up and running.
b) Report.xml is 923 kb. How would characters get in there that are not permitted in XML? I have only used the EAM interface to enter data (i.e. I haven't tried to import anything in bulk or script anything)
I didn't see any errors in the log files, but I will attach them..it doesn't allow .txt or .log attachments...I'll work on that and send them separately; however, I don't see an error.
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

This may be relevant;
When I start Tomcat with the startup batch file, a command line box appears, detailing what is being executed etc.
That seems fine - no errors.
However, when I open the event viewer report page, several errors appear in that cmd box, along the lines of "error java.net.malformedurlexception unknown protocol c "
Googling this error tells me that the error means I have used a filename beginning with c: in a context where a URL is expected".
The error goes on to list different stylesheets that weren't compiled as a result. This error only happens when I open the browser to the Report viewer site.
User avatar
jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Thanks for your posts.

Having Tomcat in the Documents folder should be just fine - in fact on Windows 7/2008 this can solve a lot of silly user access permission problems.

Report.xml can get invalid characters in there from EAM, typically when pasting content from Word or Excel into the form fields in Protege. Things like smart quotes can come across without being noticed until the XML processing starts up in Viewer! We're working on better error handling in Viewer right now.

Thanks also for the second post - I think we've nearly identified the problem. You're getting a blank page because of the errors that the Viewer Engine is encountering. It would be great if you could even copy and paste the last few lines of the error message from Tomcat into a post (to save uploading problems). Even the last 50-100 lines should give us a clear idea of the cause. These should be reported in 'stdout_<THE DATE>.log' or 'stderr_<THE DATE>.log'

You're right about the snippet of error message. This suggests that a URL is being requested that includes a filename starting 'C:\…'
I'd like to see more of the error message to help track down exactly what file is being accessed here. Most likely a straight-forward configuration issue but it would be very helpful to know which stylesheets are being reported as not compiled along with the details of the error.
I've just double checked and we don't use the URL class directly in the Viewer Engine, so the problem is going to be slightly different to what many of the websites report for that particular exception.

Just to confirm, when you publish from the Essential Architecture Reporting Tab in Protege, with the http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer/reportService URL, does the publishing process complete successfully? Does the timestamp on 'reportXML.xml' get updated within <TOMCAT>/webapps/essential_viewer get updated accordingly?

Post up - or feel free to send us relevant logs via email and we'll get this resolved.

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

jonathan.carter wrote:Thanks for your posts.

Having Tomcat in the Documents folder should be just fine - in fact on Windows 7/2008 this can solve a lot of silly user access permission problems.

Report.xml can get invalid characters in there from EAM, typically when pasting content from Word or Excel into the form fields in Protege. Things like smart quotes can come across without being noticed until the XML processing starts up in Viewer! We're working on better error handling in Viewer right now.
I did do some cut and paste so I will review those entries. Also, sometimes when I enter a new instance name, it turns red...it's trying to tell me something, but I'm not sure what.
jonathan.carter wrote: Thanks also for the second post - I think we've nearly identified the problem. You're getting a blank page because of the errors that the Viewer Engine is encountering. It would be great if you could even copy and paste the last few lines of the error message from Tomcat into a post (to save uploading problems). Even the last 50-100 lines should give us a clear idea of the cause. These should be reported in 'stdout_<THE DATE>.log' or 'stderr_<THE DATE>.log'
You've mentioned these two logs before, but I don't have them. I've got catalina<date>, host-manager<date>,localhost<date>, localhost_access_log<date>,manager<date>. The Catalina logs show the normal startup commands that I see in a command box when I start up Tomcat - however, it doesn't show the errors that I see in the command box when I try to open the viewer page. I have captured the errors in a .png, but I can neither paste them here or attach. What email should I use to send these?
jonathan.carter wrote: You're right about the snippet of error message. This suggests that a URL is being requested that includes a filename starting 'C:\…'
I'd like to see more of the error message to help track down exactly what file is being accessed here. Most likely a straight-forward configuration issue but it would be very helpful to know which stylesheets are being reported as not compiled along with the details of the error.
I've just double checked and we don't use the URL class directly in the Viewer Engine, so the problem is going to be slightly different to what many of the websites report for that particular exception.

Just to confirm, when you publish from the Essential Architecture Reporting Tab in Protege, with the http://localhost:8080/essential_viewer/reportService URL, does the publishing process complete successfully? Does the timestamp on 'reportXML.xml' get updated within <TOMCAT>/webapps/essential_viewer get updated accordingly?
Yes, I can confirm that the publishing process gives me a success message and that the timestamp on the ReportXML.xml gets updated.
jonathan.carter wrote: Post up - or feel free to send us relevant logs via email and we'll get this resolved.

Jonathan
I'd love to email the errors to you Jonathan..they show the stylesheets where the problem is encountered.
User avatar
jonathan.carter
Posts: 1087
Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44

Don't worry too much about the names turning red. All this indicates is that there is some other element in the model with that name. This is not always a problem but it's not good to have two instances of the same class with the same name. So, in practice this is a warning but will not affect the model that you can build.

I'll contact you directly about the logs and then we'll post back the resolution

Jonathan
Essential Project Team
SWayneBell
Posts: 10
Joined: 18 Oct 2011, 11:29

Hi,

I am happy to report that this problem was solved, due to the tenacity and persistance of Jonathan Carter.

For some reason - likely due to some rookie installation errors on my part with Tomcat - the path to Tomcat contained the characters '[' and ']' - i.e. left and right square brackets.
The actual path was C:\Users\sbell\Documents\apache-tomcat-7.0.22-windows-x64[1] and the square brackets at the end caused this whole problem.
When I removed them, viewer opened up without a problem and has been running ever since!
Thanks again Jonathan, and thanks also to anyone else who assisted (Neil and others).
Post Reply