AC7 Locking Up at Checkout .... please help!

[chalvorsen]

With the holiday sales, it seems as though this is happening much more frequent, however many of our customers and our error log were reporting this early with hardly any traffic, that at the checkout stage, the site would lock up and / or time out. Also, sending email order confirmations have been timing out. Any suggestions or ideas as to why this is happening? We have upgraded our server already, and changed the SMTP out server for email to 80 from 25.

Please help, the holiday traffic is great but not if customers are getting stuck at a screen!

[sohaib]

Given the information available we can only make wild guesses.
Do you see any errors in the Error Log?
Also check App_Data/Logs/app.log and see if there are any exceptions/errors logged there...

Try to reproduce the problem on your site yourself so that you have better idea what is happening.

If you are on a shared hosting environment, the other sites hosted on the same server can possibly be the culprits ... They could be chewing up all the bandwidth or processor time...

[chalvorsen]

The only thing we are seeing in the error log is confirmation email is timing out - unable to send. That tells me that possibly our customers are getting stuck on that last step because it is trying to send out a confirmation email that will not send. It has happened to me the other day while processing a customers order over the phone. The confirmation email was not sent and I got stuck in the last screen although the order was actually processed.

Any suggestions as to why this could be happening?

This is an error just pulled off the ap_log

WARN 2008-12-01 13:42:43,062 891427ms Object a - Error sending email with subject 'Confirmation - Order Number 200103'.
System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: The operation has timed out.
at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send(MailMessage message)
at CommerceBuilder.Messaging.EmailClient.Send(MailMessage mailMessage, SmtpSettings smtpSettings, Boolean throwOnError)
ERROR 2008-12-01 13:42:43,249 891615ms Object a - Unhandled exception during checkout.
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'TotalCharges', table 'mpxdb.ablecommerce.ac_Orders'; column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails.
The statement has been terminated.
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection)
at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning(TdsParserStateObject stateObj)
at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Run(RunBehavior runBehavior, SqlCommand cmdHandler, SqlDataReader dataStream, BulkCopySimpleResultSet bulkCopyHandler, TdsParserStateObject stateObj)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.FinishExecuteReader(SqlDataReader ds, RunBehavior runBehavior, String resetOptionsString)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReaderTds(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, Boolean async)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method, DbAsyncResult result)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.InternalExecuteNonQuery(DbAsyncResult result, String methodName, Boolean sendToPipe)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery()
at Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Database.DoExecuteNonQuery(DbCommand command)
at Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Database.ExecuteNonQuery(DbCommand command)
at CommerceBuilder.Orders.Basket.Checkout(CheckoutRequest checkoutRequest, Boolean validate, Boolean triggerEvents)

[AbleMods]

The only thing we are seeing in the error log is confirmation email is timing out - unable to send. That tells me that possibly our customers are getting stuck on that last step because it is trying to send out a confirmation email that will not send. It has happened to me the other day while processing a customers order over the phone. The confirmation email was not sent and I got stuck in the last screen although the order was actually processed.

Your error log indicates two separate errors...

WARN 2008-12-01 13:42:43,062 891427ms Object a - Error sending email with subject 'Confirmation - Order Number 200103'.
System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: The operation has timed out.
at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send(MailMessage message)
at CommerceBuilder.Messaging.EmailClient.Send(MailMessage mailMessage, SmtpSettings smtpSettings, Boolean throwOnError)

This error is a problem with your mail server. How are you sending your email? Shared email provider? Google? Your own internal SMTP server? Whatever it is, that server or the bandwidth TO that server is not enough to handle it. Other possibility is the mail setup is not configured correctly, however this is unlikely if other orders emails are going through. Regardless, your outbound mail setup is the problem.

ERROR 2008-12-01 13:42:43,249 891615ms Object a - Unhandled exception during checkout.
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'TotalCharges', table 'mpxdb.ablecommerce.ac_Orders'; column does not allow nulls. UPDATE fails.
The statement has been terminated.

This is the more troubling error. I've seen this one on my site from time-to-time. I suspect, although I have no real proof yet, is that it relates to timeouts from shipping carriers causing the _Basket.Checkout() method to fail to calculate the final order total.
This is pure theory as I personally have not been able to consistently reproduce the error. No customers have contacted me either, so I'm not entirely sure they even know something bad happened.
Notice it says "Update" fails. This means something "saved' the order and then subsequently tried to "update" it. I would expect to see the order in the system however something that needed to get saved was not saved.