BPC-NW 7.5 SP08 Web Site does not display Task Pane when using DNS alias

[Former Member]

BPC-NW 7.5 SP08 .NET installed on Windows 2008 r2 64-but server.

Standard IIS install with Windows Authentication and standard BPC .NET install process followed according to Installation Guide.

When we access the Web Site using the machine name and click (for instance) Interface for Web (Administration), we have no problems. IP address is similarly OK.

We have a DNS alias (C-NAME) that resolves to the server FQDN - standard alias setup. It resolves on the client and on the server with no problems (e.g. no extra hops). All nslookups are fine from client and server and alias correctly resolves to the machine name. Localhost and 127.0.0.1 also work correctly from the server itself.

When we try to access the web using the alias using the same process as before we do not get a Task Pane using IE on a client or the server itself. Running Fiddler shows that the .NET cookie (no doubt containg the user name) is not being read when the alias is used.

So the issue appears to DNS or IIS/.NET related.

Narrowing this down we noted that the issue is connected with the UJA_LAST_USER table - i.e. the last AppSet/Application the user accessed (or current view). When the user accessing the web has an entry in the APPL_ID table the alias starts to work. With this working, the user now selects Application not Set from the current view and the failure happens again - put and entry in this field and it works again. Completely reproducable but only in customer environment - I can't reproduce on my VM environment using the same version. This this workflow I don't see how this can be DNS or IIS/.NET related and am stumped........

We could attempt to populate the UJA_LAST_USER table with a program but not all users would have access to the same applications so we'd need to be careful but this is at best a clunky workaround.

Any ideas...........?

Edited by: Bill Lang on Aug 31, 2011 12:00 PM

[Former Member]

Finally have an answer. The DNS we are using has an underscore in it. Support found a Microsoft article that places restrictions on DNS alias's to a dash and a period (full stop to us British folks).

The article is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316112. It says it applies to IE5.5 and 6.0 but I guess it's any version after 5.5 as we are using 7.0.

Basically with invalid characters cookies cannot be set, hence .NET session state cannot be tracked. If there was an entry in the

UJA_LAST_USER table BPC takes the username as reported by IIS/AD and uses what it finds there. Obviously if it is not a complete entry then it looks to what selections you have made in the AppSet selection screen - this is stored in the session state which of course isn't present.

Anyway, all solved by using a dash rather than an underscore in the DNS name. Simple when you know how, thanks to support.

PS I guess this will apply to any .NET application using session state including all versions of BPC 7x NW and MS.

Edited by: Bill Lang on Oct 21, 2011 2:34 PM