Enable and Verify MSDTC

AVEVA Work Tasks internally uses System Transactions APIs of Microsoft to perform transactions. These transactions require the MSDTC service to be configured between the database server machine and all other machines in the farm. The MSDTC service ensures that a transaction succeeds or fails as a complete unit. This is a mandatory step. AVEVA Work Tasks must be installed only after enabling the MSDTC service on your computer. Enabling MSDTC is a two-step process. You need to enable the MSDTC service before enabling MSDTC settings.

Steps to Enable MSDTC Service

1. On the Windows Start menu, click Control Panel.

   The Control Panel Items window appears.

2. Click Administrative Tools.

3. Click Component Services.

   The Component Services dialog box appears.

4. Select Services.

   The right pane lists all the services on the computer.

5. In the Name column, select Distributed Transaction Coordinator.

6. Check the status of the service.

7. If the Status column shows blank, right-click the selected service, and then click Start.

   The service gets started.

Note: Enable MSDTC service and MSDTC settings on the Database Server computer and on all the computers used to connect to the database server.

DTCTester Tool

The MSDTC connection settings can also be checked using the DTCTester tool. This tool is provided by Microsoft. Check for the availability and download from Microsoft download site.

The DTCTester tool does the following:

Establishes a connection to SQL Server using a data source name (DSN), User Name, and Password. You can establish this connection via a command line, using the default network library.

8. Creates a temporary table.

9. Enlists the connection in a transaction.

10. Does an insert on the temporary table.

11. Commits the distributed transaction.

12. Selects inserted value to make sure it was committed.

13. Closes the connection.

Steps to Use the DTCTester Tool:

14. Create an ODBC data source for your SQL Server through the ODBC utility in Control Panel.

15. Run the following from the command line:

    dtctester <dsn name><user name><password>

16. Replace the values in brackets as appropriate for your environment.

    The following table lists the ports to be opened for DTC:

See the Microsoft website for updated list of suggested ports.

MSDTC Troubleshooting Articles

17. How to troubleshoot connectivity issues in MSDTC using the DTCPing tool?

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918331

    This article describes how to troubleshoot connectivity issues in Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) by using the DTCPing tool.

18. How to use DTCTester tool?

    DTCTester tests a distributed transaction against a specified Microsoft SQL Server. This tool helps to test distributed transactions across firewalls or against networks. DTCTester performs distributed transactions by using ODBC API against a SQL Server database.

19. Distributed Transactions Operations Guide

    This operations guide provides administering, configuring, managing, and monitoring information for distributed transactions in Microsoft Windows operating systems.

    See the following pages in the Distributed Transactions Operations Guide:

    Administering Distributed Transactions

    Troubleshooting and Resolving Transactions

20. Configuring Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) to Work through a Firewall

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/250367

    This article describes how to configure Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) to work through firewalls. You can configure DTC to communicate through firewalls, including network address translation firewalls.

For more information on MSDTC troubleshooting, refer https://stackoverflow.com/questions/673806/msdtc-how-many-ports-are-needed.