Oracle Database Discussions

Hello,

After reading through some of the posts that my search for "DBLink" returned, I was wondering if you could give me some general guidelines on troubleshooting. Here's my story:

Users report an issue in Production regarding vendors that should show up in error reports, but don't.

I began checking it out on a test DB. Ran the code in Toad debugger. The DBLink is in an INSERT INTO and queries a joined table in an AP/GL DB across the link. It ran fine: got rows in my error table correctly reflecting my test data. Switched to VB.NET (2003) running in DEBUG mode and the query (compiled in a Package) failed to insert rows into my error table. Same databases, same data as in the Toad Debugger run. The only real difference was that the VB test called a compiled Oracle package.

Switch to a different Test DB and, using VB in Debug mode, the test ran with the expected result (DBLink returned rows to my error table).

My questions:
- How can I troubleshoot this type of behavior?
- Can a DBLink become erratic, and, if so, how can I convince the DBA that it has?
- What needs to be done to fix it?

My environment is:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0 - 64bi
PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.3.0 - Production
CORE 10.2.0.3.0 Production
TNS for 64-bit Windows: Version 10.2.0.3.0 - Production
NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.3.0 - Production

Mark Baran
Sr. analyst developer
American Agricultural Insurance Co