Act.Framework.MissingMasterDatabaseException

[Andrey Anishchenko]

Hello,

a customer of ours gets this exception. After examining the log files, I see that the exception is cause by these two innocent lines of code in my program:

var act = new ActFramework();

act.LogOn(actConn.ActDB, actConn.UserName, actConn.Password);

The stack trace looks like this:

Act.Framework.MissingMasterDatabaseException: Error in the application.

   at Act.Framework.ActFramework.FailLogOn(Exception ex, TraceCategory tCat, TraceLevel tLevel)

   at Act.Framework.ActFramework.LogOn(String userName, String password, String databaseType, String databaseHost, String databaseName, Boolean fireEvents, Boolean suppressTierCheck, Boolean suppressSchemaCheck, Boolean suppressLicenseCheck, Boolean allowTrialModeDeparture, LogonTrack tracklogon)

   at Act.Framework.ActFramework.LogOn(String userName, String password, String databaseType, String databaseHost, String databaseName, Boolean fireEvents, LogonTrack tracklogon)

   at Act.Framework.ActFramework.LogOn(String xmlPADFile, String userName, String password)

My program is not a plug-in, it is a stand-alone application that references ACT! librariesand uses ActFramework to access ACT! data. The customer claims that he can work with his ACT! DB without any problems at all, and that he already tried Repair & Reindex. My program is used by many customers for several years now, and this is the first customer that gets this exception. 

Could you describe, what this exception means and what can we do to resolve the problem?

Your help is highly appreciated.

[mwood]

Hello Andrey,

This exception is thrown when the SQL server master database cannot be found, reinstalling SQL may resolve the issue.

[Andrey Anishchenko]

Hi Matthew,

Thank you for your answer. I will pass this to the customer and will let you know if it helps.

[wellmet]

If this client is running ACT! 2013 and your other clients have been running ACT! 2012 or earlier you must recompile stand alone programs that work with the new version of ACT! with .NET 4.0 or create a config file directive that tells the program to work with the later libraries.

Stan

[Andrey Anishchenko]

The customer has reported that it helped. I just wonder why the database got deleted, and why he could access the DB from ACT! without problems.

[Andrey Anishchenko]

To wellmet:

You can actually run your programs compiled for ACT 2012 with ACT 2013 without having to rebuild them, if you use the startup section in the config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">
<supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/>
</startup>
</configuration>

[wellmet]

Thanks for the concise config file entry.  After rereading the original post it does appear that Matt's solution is probably the best.  There is a "master" database in SQL and if it is gone for some reason that is probably what is causing the problem.  I don't remember ever seeing that happen but I think I have read about it from occasionally.

Stan