CA Gen: Client Server Encyclopedia's (CSE) cse_config command fails on Windows.

Products

• Gen
• Gen - Workstation Toolset
• Gen - Host Encyclopedia
• Gen - Run Time Distributed

Issue/Introduction

After installing the Client Server Encyclopedia (CSE) software, running the CSE configuration utility cse_config will fail with the following error when targeting SQL Server and doing a Create/Initialize or Update to the Encyclopedia:

"Error 255 while loading SQL Server schema tables."

This error occurs because the SQL Server UserID's password contains a special character like the ampersand "&". For example, the password to sa is something like "abc&def".

Resolution

There are two workarounds to this problem.

1. Change the SQL Server UserID's password to remove any special characters, and then run the cse_config. From the previous example, change the sa password to "abcdef" and then run the cse_config.
   
   
2. Leave the special character in the SQL Server UserID's password.
   
   
   1. When running the cse_config, enter "password" for all SQL Server UserID passwords, including the quotes. For example, enter "abc&def" with the quotes. This will allow the cse_config utility to run without getting the 255 error.
   2. Putting the password enclosed in quotes allows the cse_config utility to run successfully, but has a side effect of putting too many quotes in the iefmd.ini file which will cause the message dispatcher to fail. Edit your C:\ProgramData\CA\Gen 8.5\cfg\CSE\iefmd.ini, search for DBNAME and find the following.
      
      UnitParameters = "DBNAME=DBCSE DBUSER=sa DBPSWD="abc&def""
      
      Remove the extra set of quotes around the password so the line looks like the following where there is one double quote at the beginning and one double quote at the end of the string.
      
      UnitParameters = "DBNAME=DBCSE DBUSER=sa DBPSWD=abc&def"
      
      There are 3 occurrences of DBNAME in the iefmd.ini so change all 3. Save the file and the message dispatcher should start correctly.