Troubleshooting

While working with Access-to-Oracle wizard you may encounter unexpected behavior or result. Use the following information to solve some common problems and get the result you want. This summary is organized as a list of problem-resolution pairs. Each problem description starts with "P:" and each resolution - with "R:".

P: Error message "There are orphaned records that prevent from creating foreign key..."

R: Foreign key cannot be created because there are one or more child records that do not have a matching record in the parent table. You have to remove these records in order to create the foreign key.

P: Error message "ORA-12500: the listener could not start a server process..."

R: The process of starting up a dedicated server process failed. The executable could not be found or the environment may be set up incorrectly. Verify that the ORACLE Server executable is present and has execute permissions enabled. Ensure that the ORACLE environment is specified correctly in LISTENER.ORA. If Oracle server is running under MS Windows NT/2000/XP, check that service 'OracleService<data source name>' (where <data source name> is an actual name of destination Oracle data source) is running on the database server machine.

P: Error message "ORA-12505: the program could not resolve service name..."

R: The service name specified in the connection was not found in the listener's tables. Check to make sure that the service name is correct. The services that are currently registered with the listener can be obtained by typing: LSNRCTL SERVICES <listener-name>

P: Error message "Duplicate field values being used for an unique index were found..."

R: This error means that an attempt has been made to insert a record with a duplicate unique key. When migrating MS Access data into a new Oracle table, you can either edit source database in order to resolve the conflict manually or restart the program with "Skip converting indexes" checkbox selected. When appending MS Access data to an existing Oracle table, you should remove the conflicting unique index in the destination Oracle table.

P: Error message "ORA-12541: no listener..."

R: The connection request could not be completed because the listener is not running on the database server. Start the listener on the destination machine using 'lsnrctl start' command.

P: Error message "ORA-12545: connect failed because target host or object does not exist..."

R: Oracle suggest ensuring that the ADDRESS parameters (in the TNSNAMES.ORA file) have been entered correctly; the most likely incorrect parameter is the node name. Ensure that the executable for the server exists (perhaps "oracle" is missing.) If the protocol is TCP/IP, edit the TNSNAMES.ORA file to change the host name to a numeric IP address and try again. It could be a network connectivity problem. Try pinging the host. This error has been observed on a laptop when the database was local, TCP/IP protocol used but the network card had been removed.

P: In the resulting Oracle database all MS Access hyperlink fields appear as strings that look like some_text#some_other_text#.

R: Oracle has no data type similar to hyperlink. That's why the only way to save the entire information is to import it into plain text. Access-to-Oracle converts each hyperlink field into Oracle VARCHAR field formatted as <URL name>#<URL address>#.

P: The program converted all database fields fine but where are my MS Access forms?

R: Access-to-Oracle doesn't convert MS Access forms because Oracle doesn't support forms.

P: Some table names and/or field names in the resulting Oracle database are different from the original.

R: Oracle and MS Access accept different sets of characters for table names and field names. When Access-to-Oracle converts a name containing prohibited characters it replaces them with '_' in the destination database.

If you came across some other kind of problem while using Access-to-Oracle, please contact our support department at support@convert-in.com