Re-creating the problem and capturing a ww.dll log file

Recreating the problem and capturing a ww.dll log file can go a long way in helping to isolate E-Commerce issues.

These instructions cover the steps necessary for collecting a verbosity 5 log for ww.dll. It is very important to delete or remove the log from the web server and to return the verbosity to 0 after collecting the ww.dll log. This is for security and filesize reasons – the file grows in size very quickly at a busy web site and could influence performance if verbosity were left at 5.

6. Recreate the situation for which you are collecting the ww.dll log. The log file ww_log.txt is created in the C:\ ProgramData\Siriusware\ww\Log\ folder.

7. Once you have collected the log it is imperative that the log be deleted or removed from the web server and the verbosity level returned to 0 in the registry.

If you can’t get the web pages to do anything (e.g., they time out or you receive, “Page cannot be found,” errors when attempting to bring up the pages in a browser) chances are that there is something wrong with your web server. To isolate this issue, try browsing to the web site from your computer and attempt to view the release notes for E-Commerce (which are stored in the same place as the web pages). Type in the path to the web pages location, for example:

You are able to see the release notes for E-Commerce displayed. If not, your web server is probably not serving up web pages for whatever reason (Is it turned off? Did someone adjust security settings?) and you need to obtain help from your IT department to correct this before you can go any further.

If you have customized your web pages and you are getting an error when you get to a specific page, try substituting the Salesware default page for your customized page. This helps isolate whether the problem is happening as a result of your customization work or if it is some other issue.

If you get an error whenever you get to your customized Checkout.aspx page, try renaming your customized page to something like Checkout_custom.aspx, and then copy the default Salesware version of the Checkout.aspx page to the directory where your pages are located. Now run through the steps that caused the error to occur and see what happens. If you do not receive the error, chances are something went wrong in what you did to customize the page.

If you see an error message instead of the items on the items list page, for instance, ww.dll may have stopped responding. To isolate this issue, there is a test script that you can use: wwtext.exe. They are obtained from Siriusware, Inc. (if you don’t already have them) and are placed on same computer as ww.dll, in the Program Files/Siriusware/ww directory. If this script fails, ww.dll may not be responding and you follow the steps listed above to shut down and restart the COM+ wwSales application or restart the computer running ww.dll.

If you see a friendly generic error message, this generally indicates an error in the web pages – though not always. To isolate this issue, go to the web server, point your browser to http://localhost/e-commerce and recreate the steps that result in the error message. This allows you to see a more informative error message (the friendly generic message is the one presented to the outside world – the localhost message really tells you what is going on).

Remember that E-Commerce Sales Host is really just the Classic Sales application in disguise. The E-Commerce Sales Host interface allows access to the Tools menu and the diagnostic mechanisms therein. Remember that you must hit the Pause button on the interface to have access to the Tools menu.

If e-mail confirmations are not going out on E-Commerce sales as expected, one way to troubleshoot is to set up Outlook Express on your web server and use the e-mail settings found in the site config file to configure Outlook Express. If e-mail can’t be sent from Outlook Express using those settings, e-mail confirmations won’t be able to be sent either from the Salesware E-Commerce software (this isolates the problems to hardware/network/security configuration vs. the web pages or E-Commerce applications).

If you are having problems getting the appropriate item to be sold for pass renewals, investigate the DCI2DCI.xml file to troubleshoot. This file resides in the XMLFiles directory, which is located with the default web pages. It is used to provide an item translation of sorts.

If a customer bought an item called ’12 -’13 Pass last year and wants to renew it, you most likely want to sell the guest the ’13 -’14 Pass item this year. The DCI2DCI.xml file provides this translation information and must be manually edited using a text editor. Browse this file to look for problems when troubleshooting pass renewals issues involving incorrect items.

If you are having a problem getting a specific credit card to process via Sales Host, you can change the interface type in the Sales32c.INI file from web to classic and try processing via Classic mode to troubleshoot. In general, if it won’t work in classic mode, it won’t work in web mode.

Note: There is no need to toggle the license back and forth between classic and web to use these two different modes; a web license includes the Classic license by default.