When debugging server-side issues, you need to look at the various ways that the PowerPivot for SharePoint allows you to diagnose problems. Here are some tips and tricks for troubleshooting server-side issues:
A. Make sure that Excel Services works
Virtually everything in PowerPivot for SharePoint uses Excel Services.
- It is the basis for our primary rendering of workbooks, i.e. the thin-client browser-based viewing of workbooks with embedded PowerPivot data.
- Excel Services is the way that we generate thumbnails for the PowerPivot Gallery. Behind the scenes, there is an event handler that detects a changed workbook (either the uploading of a new one; or a revised one). The event handler then runs the GetSnapshot.exe program that generates and web browser control and renders the workbook in Excel Services – then taking a snapshot of the resulting web browser control (a *.png image file).
- Obviously when you click on the Gallery Silverlight control, we use Excel Services to bring up the workbook.
- And lastly, the PowerPivot Mgmt Dashboard makes extensive use of the Excel Services web part to show reports and allow the user to interact with the management reports.
Thus it should be your #1 job, as you start to investigate issues on SharePoint, that you first verify that Excel Services is working and rendering workbooks as expected. We strongly recommend that you don’t start any other troubleshooting without doing this first.
Unfortunately your first impression of Excel Services is likely misleading. You probably start it up and just click on a workbook to see if it renders. If it does, you might then bring up a PowerPivot workbook and ensure that it renders. Thus all is working and you can move on. Right? Well . . . Unfortunately, No. Just rendering a workbook does not exercise any of the PowerPivot midtier infrastructure. It just verifies that core Excel Services is working; not that the interfaces between Excel Services and PowerPivot is working; nor if PowerPivot itself is working.
To fully ensure that all of the PowerPivot ‘infrastructure’ is working, either:
- Click on a slicer if available in your workbook/model; or
- Click on Data and then either: (1) Refresh All Connections, or (2) select the pivot table with the PowerPivot data source and then Refresh Selected Connection
By doing so, you will exercise all of the midtier core components. You will ensure that Excel Services can communicate with external data sources (the PowerPivot OLEDB provider) and that credentials can be sent across properly. The PowerPivot midtier services will on-demand, locate and load the embedded workbook data (this will exercise both the Engine instance as well as the load balancing pieces of the service proxy. The connection will be exercised between the midtier System service and the Engine service for executing queries and getting results back through the OLEDB provider back to Excel Services for it to render the results.
As we’ve said above, but bears repeating again, DO THIS FIRST before you troubleshoot further, in particular if this is a new farm.
What do we do to troubleshoot when Excel Services is not working?
I’ve been digging through ULS logs trying to track this down… and I think this is the cause.
06/23/2010 10:39:37.05 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 SharePoint Foundation Monitoring nasq Medium Entering monitored scope (ExecuteWcfServerOperation) 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.48 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 5229 Information Excel Services Application service is starting. 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.50 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 3sle Medium ExcelServerApp.Initialize(): Excel Server belonging to SSP ExcelServiceApp1 was initialized with AccessModel: Claims 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.50 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 5ox6 Medium ExcelServerApp.ClearTempPath: The Ecs temp path is set to: C:\Windows\TEMP\Excel Server\FileCache\f6f93b2a-fe5f-45bb-8d0c-01eb28b2d23a 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.50 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 5ox7 Medium ExcelServerApp.ClearTempPath: An Ecs temp path already exists, attempting to delete it. 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.50 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 5ox9 Medium ExcelServerApp.ClearTempPath: Attempting to create the Ecs temp path. 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.56 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services qwdq Medium EngineInterop::LoadDll: Failed to load our engine (xlsrv.dll). GetLastError: 126 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.56 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services qwdx Unexpected EngineInterop::LoadDll: Failed to load our engine (xlsrvol.dll). GetLastError: 126 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 89rs Exception ExcelServerApp..ctor: An unhandled exception occurred during boot. Shutting down the server. Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.Interop.LoadDllException: Failed to load engine dll.The specified module could not be found. at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.Interop.EngineInterop.LoadDll(EngineFlags engineFlags, String binPath, String muiPath) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServerApp.Initialize() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 SharePoint Server Unified Logging Service c91s Monitorable Watson bucket parameters: SharePoint Server 2010, ULSException14, 5f9be61a “excel services application”, 0e00129b “14.0.4763.0″, 69f888f4 “microsoft.office.excel.server.calculationserver.interop”, 0e001294 “14.0.4756.0″, 4b9b48f9 “sat mar 13 02:12:41 2010″, 00000304 “00000304″, 00000012 “00000012″, 46bf6b31 “loaddllexception”, 38397273 “89rs” 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 7c4s Unexpected HandleShutdown: Initiating shutdown sequence – if there’s enough memory, the logs will now contain information about what went wrong. 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 7c4t Unexpected HandleShutdown: Shutdown was initiated due to an error. Exception was: Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.Interop.LoadDllException: Failed to load engine dll.The specified module could not be found. at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.Interop.EngineInterop.LoadDll(EngineFlags engineFlags, String binPath, String muiPath) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServerApp.Initialize() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected HandleShutdown: HandleShutdown was called from: at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServerApp.b__1(Exception e) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.ULS.SendWatsonOnExceptionTag(UInt32 tagID, ULSCatBase categoryID, String output, Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServerApp..ctor() at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServerApp..cctor() at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServiceBase.SafeSetContext(… 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58* w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected …) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServiceBase.BeginProcessOperation(CommandParameter parameter, WebMethodBehaviorAttribute webMethodBehavior, WebMethodType webMethodType, AsyncCallback callback, Object state, UserOperation operation) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServiceSoap.BeginGetHealthScore(AsyncCallback callback, Object asyncState) at AsyncInvokeBeginBeginGetHealthScore(Object , Object[] , AsyncCallback , Object ) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.AsyncMethodInvoker.InvokeBegin(Object instance, Object[] inputs, AsyncCallback callback, Object state) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServiceHostFactory.OperationInvokerExceptionWrapper.InvokeBegin(Object instance, Object[] inputs, AsyncCallback ca… 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58* w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected …llback, Object state) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.DispatchOperationRuntime.InvokeBegin(MessageRpc& rpc) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage5(MessageRpc& rpc) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ImmutableDispatchRuntime.ProcessMessage4(MessageRpc& rpc) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.MessageRpc.Process(Boolean isOperationContextSet) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelHandler.DispatchAndReleasePump(RequestContext request, Boolean cleanThread, OperationContext currentOperationContext) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelHandler.HandleRequest(RequestContext request, OperationContext currentOperationContext) at System.ServiceModel.Dispatcher.ChannelHandler.AsyncMessagePump(IAsyncResult result) at System.Servi… 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58* w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected …ceModel.Diagnostics.Utility.AsyncThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(IAsyncResult result) at System.ServiceModel.AsyncResult.Complete(Boolean completedSynchronously) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SecurityChannelListener`1.ReceiveItemAndVerifySecurityAsyncResult`2.InnerTryReceiveCompletedCallback(IAsyncResult result) at System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.Utility.AsyncThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(IAsyncResult result) at System.ServiceModel.AsyncResult.Complete(Boolean completedSynchronously) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.InputQueue`1.AsyncQueueReader.Set(Item item) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.InputQueue`1.EnqueueAndDispatch(Item item, Boolean canDispatchOnThisThread) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.InputQueue`1.EnqueueAndDispatch(T item, ItemDequeuedCallback deque… 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58* w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected …uedCallback, Boolean canDispatchOnThisThread) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.InputQueueChannel`1.EnqueueAndDispatch(TDisposable item, ItemDequeuedCallback dequeuedCallback, Boolean canDispatchOnThisThread) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SingletonChannelAcceptor`3.Enqueue(QueueItemType item, ItemDequeuedCallback dequeuedCallback, Boolean canDispatchOnThisThread) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.SingletonChannelAcceptor`3.Enqueue(QueueItemType item, ItemDequeuedCallback dequeuedCallback) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener.HttpContextReceived(HttpRequestContext context, ItemDequeuedCallback callback) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpTransportManager.HttpContextReceived(HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult result) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.H… 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58* w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected …ostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.BeginRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.OnBeginRequest(Object state) at System.ServiceModel.PartialTrustHelpers.PartialTrustInvoke(ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.OnBeginRequestWithFlow(Object state) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke2() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.WorkItem.Invoke() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ProcessCallbacks() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.CompletionCallback(Object state) at System.ServiceModel.Channels.IOThreadScheduler.CriticalHelper.ScheduledOverlapp… 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58* w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 94jl Unexpected …ed.IOCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.Utility.IOCompletionThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(UInt32 error, UInt32 bytesRead, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.Threading._IOCompletionCallback.PerformIOCompletionCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* pOVERLAP) 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 Excel Services Application Excel Calculation Services 2026 Warning An internal error occurred. at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.Interop.EngineInterop.LoadDll(EngineFlags engineFlags, String binPath, String muiPath) at Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server.CalculationServer.ExcelServerApp.Initialize() at Microsoft.Office.Server.Diagnostics.FirstChanceHandler.ExceptionFilter(Boolean fRethrowException, TryBlock tryBlock, FilterBlock filter, CatchBlock catchBlock, FinallyBlock finallyBlock) 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491
06/23/2010 10:39:38.58 w3wp.exe (0×1A00) 0×1B64 SharePoint Foundation Unified Logging Service 8wsw High Now terminating ULS (w3wp.exe, onetnative.dll) 435ae9d0-f798-4998-bed6-a5fc3c6d8491