Commerce Server General - Need help with Direct Mailer 2

Author

Need help with Direct Mailer 2

John Walker

2007-04-08, 1:17 pm

So I found a thread from about a year ago that detailed the problem that I
was having but there was no resolution to it. It was titled "Need help with
DirectMailer"
(http://groups.google.com/group/micr...8078ed3e41a9362).

I'm seeing the exact same thing, my DM jobs are failing from the SQL Agent
perspective. I'm seeing the same thing in my DML log file and history,
specifically:
Error: [Commerce Server Direct Mailer] Invalid argument passed to the method
or property call.

Also, I've analyzed the job to see that it's failing while executing this
command:
dmlrun.exe /create:type=CSS;dml_item=5;css_site="site" /server:dedk71
/execute /wait

I've tried running that myself (not as SQL Agent account, but as admin) and
I see the same failure.

I've double checked my COM+ settings for both the List Manager and Direct
Mailer accounts, but again it fails when I run it as administrator and that
account has full permissions to launch/configure/access both objects. In
addition I'm not seeing any DCOM failures in the event log, in fact I see
nothing in the event log except the SQL Job failure.

I've also run SQL Profiler looking for failed accesses (audit Object
permission, statement permission) but it doesn't look like the DM ever hits
the database in this case, it's failing earlier.

I'm running CS2k2 Std, over SQL 2000 Std. CS SP3, FP1 are both installed.

Anyone have any ideas here? I'm stumped!

John Walker

2007-04-10, 7:17 pm

I have been on this for the past 3 days and have not gotten much further.

In doing some experiments with the command lines, the create argument is definitely where the issue is since it's the required option and removing the others still causes the error. I know DmlRun is a simple RPC client into the DML service, and I'm assuming that the error is occuring within the service itself. If I set the service to disabled and stop it, it fails w/ an unable to connect to service first before I encounter the error so it is likely in the service. Also by modifying the create argument, it fails quickly w/ obviously invalid arguments (missing site, type or item, item > 0).

I'm guessing there is some kind of connection issue between the DML service and the campaign database. I'm using NTLM authentication for the database connections so there could definitely be permissions issues but this is a single machine deployment (site, DM, SQL all on same server). The DML service is running as it's own limited user service account and has access to the DirectMailer and campaigns database. Additionally when using the profiler there are no connections initiated to the server before it fails.

I am using FP1 and the FP1 discounting system. I'm not sure but I don't believe this impacts the direct mailer in any way (still use bizdesk and campaigns to set up direct mailings). I've looked in the FP1 docs for any migration issues with the Direct Mailer after installing FP1. And I have used the direct mailer before with FP1 so I don't think that's directly the issue.

I thought maybe the invalid argument error could actually be referring to a configuration property/value rather than the command line supplied arguments, but I've been over the DM configuration properties in the admin database (resourceProp where resource=DirectMailer) and I can't seem to figure anything that might be invalid.

I've looked in the Event Log and the DML log, but it didn't have any details (other than the original error message).

I also tried dumping the strings from the service .exe in the hopes of further isolating the error. However I did not see the error message anywhere. I'm assuming that it's probably an error message thrown by ATL or some other library the service is using. Googling for the error message (sans Commerce Server portion) didn't get me anywhere though.

If anyone has any thoughts, or ideas.... Thanks in advance!

"John Walker" <john.d.walker@gmail.com> wrote in message news:O3fEUlUeHHA.4872@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> So I found a thread from about a year ago that detailed the problem that I
> was having but there was no resolution to it. It was titled "Need help with
> DirectMailer"
> (http://groups.google.com/group/micr...8078ed3e41a9362).
>
> I'm seeing the exact same thing, my DM jobs are failing from the SQL Agent
> perspective. I'm seeing the same thing in my DML log file and history,
> specifically:
> Error: [Commerce Server Direct Mailer] Invalid argument passed to the method
> or property call.
>
> Also, I've analyzed the job to see that it's failing while executing this
> command:
> dmlrun.exe /create:type=CSS;dml_item=5;css_site="site" /server:dedk71
> /execute /wait
>
> I've tried running that myself (not as SQL Agent account, but as admin) and
> I see the same failure.
>
> I've double checked my COM+ settings for both the List Manager and Direct
> Mailer accounts, but again it fails when I run it as administrator and that
> account has full permissions to launch/configure/access both objects. In
> addition I'm not seeing any DCOM failures in the event log, in fact I see
> nothing in the event log except the SQL Job failure.
>
> I've also run SQL Profiler looking for failed accesses (audit Object
> permission, statement permission) but it doesn't look like the DM ever hits
> the database in this case, it's failing earlier.
>
> I'm running CS2k2 Std, over SQL 2000 Std. CS SP3, FP1 are both installed.
>
>
> Anyone have any ideas here? I'm stumped!
>
>