I recently deployed a new RPD to one of my BI servers and after restarting the coreapplication, wasn’t able to log on anymore – the login process hung at “Singing in…” indefinitely.

After some investigation, I found out what had happened:
1.) The new RPD used connections to a datasource situated on a different database (other than the primary DWH) which were utilised in new initialization blocks which fired upon login (no “deferred execution”).

2.) The TNSNAMES on the BI server machine had contained all necessary connectivity information until the night before, but had been reset to a default configuration during the night for some reason and only retained the primary DWH.

3.) This caused the login process to hang indefinitely without any meaningful errors being logged and hence nothing was visible in Enterprise Manager.

4.) Restoring the TNSNAMES with all relevant DB entries removed the error and login was possible again.

Conclusion: never assume that your infrastructure setup is a “given” and won’t change.

Cheers,
Christian