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lbreddemann
Active Contributor

Today's tidbit is one of those little dumb things that happen every now and then and when I think: "Great, now this doesn't work... WTF...?"

Usually that's a bit frustrating for me as I like to think that I know how stuff works around here (here, meaning my work area, tools, etc.).

So here we go. Since the SAP HANA Studio is currently not "an area of strategic investment" and a the Web based tools are on the rise, I try to use those more often.

I even have the easy to remember user-friendly URL (http://<LongAndCrypticNodeName.SomeDomainname.Somethingelse>:<FourDigitPortNumber>/sap/hana/ide/catalog/) saved as a browser bookmark - ain't I organized! :smile:


And this thing worked before.

I have used it.

So click on the link and logon to the instance and get this fancy "picture" (as my Dad would explain it to me -  everything that happens on the screen is a "picture", which is really helpful during phone-based intra-family help-desking...):

Pic 1 - The starting 'picture', looking calm and peaceful... for now

Ok, the blocky colors are due to GIF file format limitation to 256 colors, but you should be able to see the important bits and pieces.

There is some hard to read error message, that I choose to ignore and click on the little blue SQL button and then ... nothing happens.

I click again and again as if I cannot comprehend that the computer understood me the first time, but no amount of clicks yields to open the SQL editor.

What is going on?

Next step:

Do the PRO-thing...

     ... open Google Developer Tools...

     ... delete session cookies and all the saved information.

     ... Logon again.

Lo and behold, besides the much longer loading time for the page, nothing changed.

Great. So what's else is wrong? Did the last SAP HANA upgrade mess with the Web tools?


Pic 2 - wild clicking on the button and visually enhanced error message indicating some bad thing

Luckily, that wasn't it.

Somewhere in the back of my head I remembered, that I had a couple of browser extensions installed.

Now I know what you're thinking: Of course it's the browser extensions. That moron! Totally obvious.

What can I say? It wasn't to me.

Pic 3 - there's the culprit, the root cause and trigger for hours of frustration

It just didn't occur to me that e.g. the Wikiwand browser extension that I use to have the Wikipedia articles in a nicer layout would install a browser wide hook to the CTRL+CLICK event and that this would prevent the Web tools to sometimes not open.

After disabling this (there's a settings page for this extension) the Web tools resumed proper function.

Good job!

So is the Wikiwand extension a bad thing? No, not at all. There are tons of other extensions that do the same.

While I would really like to demand back the precious hours of my life this little mishap took from me, I assume that this request would be a bit pointless.

To me, at least, this experience, leaves me with the insight, that I clearly thought to simplistic about the frontend technology we use today. Web browsers are incredible far from a standard environment and controlling what the end user finally sees is not easy (of really possible).

Ok, that's my learning of the day.

Cheers,

Lars

p.s.

the error message "Could not restore tab since editor was not restorable" not only seems to be a tautology, but also had absolutely nothing to do with the problem in this case.