Alteryx Alias Problem - Errors Continuously

[Hydra]

Hi Community/ Alteryx,

Hopefully you can help with this issue. The user has 2 alias's in his connection manager that have worked for about 6 months. Today when he opened up a workflow to run it he received an error. Error pictures are attached. When we try to use or click on the connection it says the error. When we go to the alias manager it errors. Basically we can't seem to find a way to fix or see whatever is causing the alias to be invalid.

Error log was sent.

Please advise if possible?

Thanks,

Andrew

[David-Carnes]

Hey @Hydra!

Have you tried connecting  to the data source without using the aliases?    Start from scratch .  If that works then perhaps you can delete the offending aliases and set new ones.

If you encounter errors then perhaps  drivers/DSNs/TNSnames files/whatever have gotten updated/corrupted/deleted/whatever.  Or the data sources themselves have issues.

Good luck!

Ciao,

David

[patrick_digan]

@Hydra I would try opening the workflow using notepad and looking for lines like this:

          <CachedCosmeticName />
          <File RecordLimit="1" FileFormat="17">aka:ALIAS_NAME|||TABLE_NAME</File>

This is the underlying data for input tools, and it may shed some light on the alias that appears to have gotten messed up. If you can post back/message me those couple of lines, we may be able to further debug. For what it's worth, here is where the alias info is stored:

SYSTEM aliases: "C:\ProgramData\Alteryx\Engine\SystemAlias.xml"
USER aliases: "C:\Users\<<YOURUSERID>>\AppData\Roaming\Alteryx\Engine\UserAlias.xml"
GALLERY aliases: "C:\Users\<<YOURUSERID>>\AppData\Roaming\Alteryx\Engine\GalleryAlias.xml"

The system and user aliases are both very readable, but the gallery alias file is not. 

Since your one error is complaining about a cosmetic name, that would point towards something being funny with the gallery aliases.

[Hydra]

Here is the dump with some items redacted.

Workflow:

<File RecordLimit="" FileFormat="17"><![CDATA[aka:<<ALIAS_NAME>>|||

<<SQL Query>>

]]></File>

SYSTEM aliases:

EMPTY

USER aliases:

<Aliases>

<Alias name=<<NAME>>>

  <Connection>oci:<<USERID>>/__<<ENCODED PASSWORD>>__@<<NAME>></Connection>

  <Password><<PASSWORD>></Password>

  <SourceUrl/>

  <CosmeticName><<NAME>></CosmeticName>

</Alias>

<Alias name="<<NAME2>>">

  <Connection>odbc:DSN=MySQL</Connection>

  <Password></Password>

  <SourceUrl />

  <CosmeticName><<NAME2>></CosmeticName>

  <AliasId><<ID_NUMBERS>></AliasId>

</Alias></Aliases>

GALLERY aliases:

               300+ character alphanumeric string (if you need this I can post it).

Thanks,

Andrew

[patrick_digan]

@Hydra 

1) referring to your workflow code, is the alias_name something normal (like Alias1) or is it a GUID (like 59befac9f3b0c08c30b93).

2) can you confirm that there is no CachedCosmeticName item on the line right before your filepath?

I'll give it some more thought but nothing is jumping out at me here yet...

[Hydra]

1) There is not

2) There is no CachedCosmeticName that appears there.

We are still trying to troubleshoot. Can't do anything in the workflow whatsoever. As soon as you change anything it throws a sequence of errors. The alias no longer works in any other workflow. Has to be an issue with the storage of the file.

[patrick_digan · Accepted solution]

Sorry I forgot to ask if you're trying to use a gallery or user alias since both files exist.

If you're trying to use one of your two "user" aliases, is it possible to backup the user alias XML (just change the filename) and then recreate the 2 connections in their alteryx designer?

If you're trying to use a "gallery" data connection, you'll need a gallery admin to check that the name of the connection hasn't changed in the gallery admin screens and that the user still has access.

I'm really at a loss so these are just shots in the dark. All the info you've provided seems normal, so I must be overlooking something.

[Hydra]

Hi Patrick,

Thank you for the help. We ended up renaming all 3 alias files in the folder. After we did that we were able to access the connection manager. Only downside is we have to recreate all of our previous connections, but the workflow is now accessible!

Thanks!

[KeithJ]

I had a similar issue and was getting a unhandled exception when accessing the Alias manager. Resolved it by renaming GalleryAlias.xml file so it would re-sync with the gallery.