Sometimes the bain of my life.  It appears as a simple Metastorm BPM error and results in various messages logged in the event log and / or the eLog table.  This time the following event was logged in the application event log and it was looking like SQL Server was throwing a wobbly:

ErrorCode: ‘-2147467259′ Description: ‘Cannot create new connection because in manual or distributed transaction mode.’  Source: ‘Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server’  SQL State: ”  NativeErrorCode: ‘0,

Sometimes the simple problems slow you down somewhat and it’s the time it takes searching for the information (that you know is out there) that takes the most of it.  Today was one of those days!

After searching on MSDN and other SQL related web sites I went back to the tried and tested Metastorm forum hosted by ProcessMapping and searched for the following string “distributed transaction mode”.

Lo and behold - one result - and the right one to boot!. 

The solution - run the script eWorkProcedures.sql found at:
C:\Program Files\Metastorm BPM\Engine\Database\SQL scripts\

It looks like I upgraded a test VM a while back but never quite completed the job.  I guess the moral of the story is check the Metastorm forums first, then look at other non-metastorm related sites.  It’s far easier that way!