Dispatcher Errors

Recently when working on a new QA system based on a copy of the PROD database when I encountered an error that I had never seen before when starting up the first dispatcher. I highlighted it below:

Running MxDispatcher_d1.
[21.09.2011 18:37:19-539] - Initialized log for com.sap.idm.ic.services.api.MXMCApi. Log level is Debug
MxDispatcher version: 7.10.5.2 Built: 07.06.2011 16:20:24 (c) Copyright 2008 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
Java VM: Sun Microsystems Inc.   Version: 1.5.0_22
Java home: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.5.0_22\jre
Java lib/ext: C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.5.0_22\jre\lib\ext
CLASSPATH: d:\sap\idm\Java\mxdispatcher.jar;d:\sap\idm\Java\mxmcapi.jar;D:\jdbc2.0\sqljdbc_2.0\enu\sqljdbc.jar;
[21.09.2011 18:37:19-557] - MxDispatcher:Reading prop files
[21.09.2011 18:37:19-557] - MxDispatcher:Loading driver: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver
[21.09.2011 18:37:19-639] - MxDispatcher:Creating connection to : jdbc:sqlserver://NWIDMSBX:1433;databasename=mxmc_db;user=mxmc_rt;password=********
[21.09.2011 18:37:21-369] - MxDispatcher:Reading main MxDispatcher configuration ...
[21.09.2011 18:37:21-593] - MxDispatcher:Dispatcher configuration d1 not found
[21.09.2011 18:37:21-594] - MxDispatcher:Error reading main MxDispatcher configuration ...
[21.09.2011 18:37:21-594] - The first config load failed:Dispatcher configuration d1 not found

I went through all of the normal dispatcher configuration checks, JAVA configuration, drivers, and database configuration. Everything looked OK, My ODBC checks were ok, and I knew that I was contacting the database server and that the ports were open. One suspicious thing was the extremely long length of the dispatcher name, however was not the the cause.

What we actually found was that the server names were not correct after all. The ODBC connection was pointed to the correct server, but the Java runtime connection was to the wrong server. Nothing like the confusion in moving configurations from one environment to another!  After ensuring once again, that I had the correct configuration, I regenerated the dispatcher scripts and all was fine.

So the cause of this error is when there is a connection string mismatch if you should see this in the future.