09-019 COLTT modifies error rmessage displayed in PROSIM when CalcEquilibrium fails

[michaelhalloran]

I am logging a CAPE-OPEN VB6 UO in ProSim Plus 3.0.2.18. The Validate method is faced with a CalcEquilibrium that does not work, at least it is what I presume. When running the Validate without COLTT (1.07 and 1.08.02 have strictly the same behavior), I get an error message as in Screenshots_woCOLTT.doc, it says “la valeur de la propriété est inconnue”, something like the property value is unknown. With COLTT enabled on the UO, I get an error message as in Screenshots_withCOLTT.doc : “La méthode ~ de l’objet ~ a échoué” which may be translated as “the method of object ~ has failed”.

ProSim SA has told me that CalcEquilibrium is supposed to give an ECapeUnknown error code. The error is prompted by a GetProp made by the thermo server on the MO while the MO is not yet prepared to receive such calls since the MO is calculated once the UO represented the process feed has been calculated. The ECapeUnknown error code is consistent with the message displayed without COLTT “the value of the property is unknown”. So the point may be to investigate if and why ECapeUnknown does not appear as the error code displayed by CapeEquilibrium.

The message displayed by ProSIm Plus without COLTT is not that explicit for sure but it seems wrong to me for COLTT to somehow change the message displayed.

[michelpons]

COLTT 1.07 log file

[michelpons]

COLTT 1.08.02 log file

[michelpons]

Screenshots with COLTT enabled (zipped Word document)

[michelpons]

Screenshots without COLTT enabled (zipped Word document)

[michaelhalloran]

Michel,

both logs show that CalcEquilibrium returns error code 0x80041032, whereas ECAPEUnknown is 0x80040501 - see Error.idl. So CalcEquilibrium is not returning ECapeUnknown. I don't understand why the message is different but it does not seem from the code that COLTT is changing the error code returned by CalcEquilibrium after it fails. The getProp call is not logged so presumably COLTT is not changing anything about the error code returned by it.

[michelpons]

Is there anything to be done on my side? Should I try to involve ProSim developers on this?

[michelpons]

I have rerun the case with COLTT 1.08.3 Build Oct 27, 2009. I observe the same behaviour as with previous versions of COLTT. The message in the error box displayed is still different when COLTT is enabled on the UO compared to COLTT disabled. ProSim Plus has not changed so the error returned by the CalcEquilibrium method is still not ECapeUnknown. The issue has been raised with ProSim Support & Developement on August 27, 2009. As far as I can see I got no feedback on this being resolved in a subsequent version of ProSim Plus. So we are left with the issue that COLTT seems to change, for whatever reasons, the message displayed. By the way (see attached log file), since Validate returns an error code, shouldn't COLTT try to get more info on the error (in this case it wouldn't give us much more info but in general Validate could interpret in its own way whatever is returned by CalcEquilibrium and give its analysis in the error description)?

[michelpons]

Log file obtained with COLTT 1.08.3 Build Oct 27, 2009

[michelpons]

Using COLTT V2.0 Build Sep 11, 2011 I have noticed that with or without COLTT enabled on the PMC used to document this issue, I get the very same error message when trying to Validate the UO: \"The value of the property is unknown\". So I consider the issue as resolved since there is no more a difference in the error messages received by the end-user depending on whether the PMC is logged or not.