Program

BIOVIA Direct (all versions)

Operating System

All supported operating systems

Summary

BIOVIA has internally observed that after applying Oracle 19c Release Update 24 (aka Oracle 19.24.0.0.0) installed BIOVIA Direct versions may no longer work. Calls to BIOVIA Direct operators, functions and procedures then fail with the Oracle error ORA-28576: lost RPC connection to external procedure agent. The problem apparently only occurs with a small number of patch installations. Linux and Windows machines are equally affected. On some installations, the problem occurs immediately after installing the Oracle patch, but then disappears permanently after rebooting the Oracle server.

The problem cannot be fully reproduced at this time. At the moment BIOVIA can only advise to roll back the Oracle patch 19.24 if the described problem occurs after installation of the patch and does not disappear after a reboot of the Oracle server.

Update: As far as we can see, this is a bug in Oracle that is listed under bug number 36551493 with the generic description 'ORA-28576: LOST RPC CONNECTION TO EXTERNAL PROCEDURE AGENT'. Apparently the bug report does not contain any publicly available technical background information. However, Oracle has provided patches for the various 19c release updates under this bug number. In the internal cases in which we observed this error, the problem was actually resolved after applying Oracle patch 36551493. 

Error Details

As far as we can see so far, the problem affects a large part of the BIOVIA Direct functionality, but not all functions. If you are affected by this problem, BIOVIA Direct may still work in some cases, but typically you will run into problems very quickly as soon as different Direct functions are used.  

The full error message typically looks like this: 

ORA-28576: lost RPC connection to external procedure agent
ORA-06512: at "C\$DIRECT2024.MDLAUXOP", line 2270
ORA-06512: at "C\$DIRECT2024.MDLAUXOP", line 2267
28576. 00000 -  "lost RPC connection to external procedure agent"
*Cause:    A fatal error occurred in either an RPC network connection,
           the extproc agent, or the invoked 3GL after communication had
           been established successfully.
*Action:   First check the 3GL code you are invoking; the most likely
           cause of this error is abnormal termination of the
           invoked "C" routine. If this is not the case, check for
           network problems. Correct the problem if you find it. If all
           components appear to be normal but the problem persists, the
           problem could be an internal logic error in the RPC transfer
           code.  Contact your customer support representative.