Circular reference error

[Herbgarden]

From reading here I realise that I shouldn't link summary tasks. Sadly
that's a trifle late and I already have a circular refenence problem and its
telling me to get rid of the dependency between the task which I would if I
could see them!! But when I try to open the project in Project rather than
look at it via Project Server I see an empty project file! The data is still
there, cause I can see it in Project Server but I can't alter anything
there?? Help!

 

[Flora Seymour]

We are experieincing something very simliar and have logged a call with
microsoft support, but no good answer to date. We did set calulations to
manual -- the circluar references error disaapears but the project still
opens empty. We see task in Web Access so the data is still there.

If I find out anything new, I'll let you know, in the meantime any insight
thru this channel would be great!

Flora

 

[Herbgarden]

Well its good to know its not just me at any rate Flora - I was feeling very
alone! I've tried hacking at the database to remove the circular reference
but it just moved back a task suggesting that I'll end up deleting the entire
project. I'd altered what I thought was the predecessors for that project's
tasks but to no avail and then in desperation deleted the task but still no
joy. I have another one gone the same route now! Everything else has been
saved by doing a fast trawl through all projects and removing the use of
summary tasks in this way - shame as it seemed a very logical use of them!

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Herbgarden and Flora:

Did you know that, together, your aliases would make a great name for a
sixties rock band?

Herb: hacking the database is useless because the data you see exists only
for your convenience. The data that project actually uses is stored in a
binary blob in a single field in the MSP_Projects table. You can't get at
the corruption by manipulating the database this way, at least not without
forcing a rebuild of the blob, which can happen on a save event, but you
can't get that far.

If you don't have a viable backup, then your best bet is to rebuild the
plan. Copy what you can from the web views to recreate it.

Circular relationships are typically the result of misuse of
predecessor/successor relationships. Misuse, usually means "overuse." If
you're seeing a lot of this, it's a very clear indication that your users
need fundamental project training. This is an extremely rare occurrence when
the user base is properly trained.

 

[Flora Seymour]

Thanks Gary. Thats interesting. In a pure sense I think that a user of an
application should not be able to corrupt data to the point where it no
longer opens with that app. I would condsider it a bug with the application.
Having said that, can you point me to any more detailed doc on "bad
practises" or "good Practises" that I can relay to our users ? Thanks!

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Flora:

Your pure sense of things seems a little fantastic to me. In most cases
Project does catch these, that's why it's such a rare event. Hey, after a
hundred years of automobile manufacturing and the all the safety engineering
that's gone along with it, we've yet to see a crash-proof car roll-off an
assembly line. I suspect the same will hold true for software, as long as
humans are creating and using it.

I suggest that you visit the MVP site link below my signature where you'll
find a great compilation of available reading material and links to other
sources of great information.

 

[Flora Seymour]

Fair enough Thanks for the input & links.

 

[Flora Seymour]

This was suggested to us and did indeed work - we had a few date issues to
clean up but other than that the data appears to be fine.

"Set the PROJ_EXT_EDITED field to 1 in the MSP_PROJECT table for the project
in question. And see if it opens and see if you can see the data. If so you
can try to copy the data out. Save it out to mpp and/or xml format and see if
you can get to your data"

 

[Raja]

BUt what happenes with the actuals entered by the resources in the timesheet ?