Excel Add-In - retrieve does not function

Question

following upgrade to v 9.3.1 many users are experiencing the following:
Following connection to database the "Retrieve" does absolutely nothing. No error message, no feedback at all.
Task manager reveals another unexplainable EXCEL execution is also present though not shown under the "Applications" tab; found only under the "Processes" tab. We refer to them as PHANTOM instances.
"End Process" of the PHANTOM EXCEL execution and the other begins to work.
Users are reporting an increase in these occurrences.
Has anyone else experienced this problem? Have an idea of cause or a means of prevention.
Your feedback appreciated.

Answer 1

The official answer is that the Essbase Add-in will only work with the first instance/session of excel.
When an application error occurs, it will occasionally be hung in the process of closing, holding that instance. This is what you experienced and so when you opened a new workbook it was in a new session. That first session was doing all the work, but silently prevented you from getting the results.
In the task manager, you have to kill the first session before you open the new session and things will work. Short of creating a proxy session for everything or using a product like dodeca, there is no other answer.
I'm currently working on an update to my connection manager add-in to use a proxy session, but this is not a commercial endevour. I will likely post a subset of the code that can do this alone, once I get it beyond a beta version (note: it's not trivial, and I expect it to take quite a bit of time to make it work properly). Either way, you would have to put this "abstraction layer" between the excel sessions and the essbase add-in, so it's obviously not for everyone.