plstemp.xml - no program associated with it

[jhughes]

This appears to be an issue caused by an upgrade of either PSD or XMLSpy, but I'm not sure which as don't recall which was upgraded first.

I had XMLSpy 2017 installed on my machine. I did the initial install of PL/SQL Developer. Queried up XMLType columns in the DB and could successfully click on the column, click Yes to view column data externally and PSD would open the plstemp.xml in XMLSpy. Sometime later I updated XMLSpy. I think this is when the issues started where when clicking Yes on the confirm dialog to {View column data externally as "Extensible Markup Language"?}

resulted in the pop-up error
C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Temp\plstemp.xml
This file does not have a program associated with it for performing this action. Please install a program or, if on is already installed, create an association in the Default Programs control panel

I can double click a .xml file on my machine and XMLSpy opens them fine. I've updated PSD to 12.0.7.1837 but it still throws the pop-up error.

Thoughts on what could be causing this?

 

[Marco Kalter]

To obtain some more diagnostic information, can you modify the shortcut and add the DebugSQL parameter? For example:

"C:\Program Files\PLSQL Developer 12\plsqldev.exe" DebugSQL

Reproduce the problem and send me the debug.txt file that is generated in the %APPDATA%\PLSQL Developer 12 directory (e.g. C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\PLSQL Developer 12).

 

[jhughes]

I looked through the debug.txt that was generated and found these relevant lines you were looking for:
00:00:41.037 C:\Program Files\PLSQL Developer 12\FileSignatures.ini loaded successfully
00:00:41.051 FileSignatures: AppName = "Extensible Markup Language"
00:00:41.065 FileSignatures: Exe = ""C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE15\MSOXMLED.EXE" /verb open "%1""
00:00:43.101 ExecuteFile .xml "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE15\MSOXMLED.EXE" /verb open "%1"

As I'm on Windows 7, I went to Default Programs -> Associate a file type or protocol with a program. The .xml entry showed the default as Altova XMLSpy 2018. Changed it to Notepad then changed it back. Retested and still same error.

Opened up XMLSpy and went to Tools -> Options. From there selected File Types tab. Went to the .xml entry and noticed that "Use XMLSpy as default editor" was NOT checked. I checked it and closed out Spy.

Restarted PSD, repeated the test and now it works correctly. The entry from debug.txt now shows

00:01:06.662 C:\Program Files\PLSQL Developer 12\FileSignatures.ini loaded successfully
00:01:06.668 FileSignatures: AppName = "Extensible Markup Language"
00:01:06.675 FileSignatures: Exe = ""C:\Program Files\Altova\XMLSpy2018\XMLSpy.exe" "
00:01:07.876 ExecuteFile .xml "C:\Program Files\Altova\XMLSpy2018\XMLSpy.exe"

I'm guessing some conflict deeper in Windows between MS Office and Spy where PSD is the victim in terms of where/how it gets the info.

Additional note: This same issue happens on my co-worker's machine, who runs Windows 10, He has same versions of Office 2013 and XMLSpy. A contractor we work with has Office 2010 and has not seen this issue. So I'd guess an Office version issue or updates to MS Office or corporate policy pushed out to corporate machines.

This is resolved from my standpoint, but will leave it up to you as to whether something that can even be address from within PSD.

 

[mike]

xml with an external editor has never worked reliably for me. They open in Internet Explorer if I open them within PL/SQL Developer. If I open xml files from outside of PL/SQL Developer, they open with the correct application. I gave up and select the "external" tab every time. Every other file type seems to work OK.

I did have it working somehow, but then I got a new laptop and I couldn't figure out what fixed it before. I'm trying to use Notepad++, but I have tried several others as a test - Notepad, Wordpad, etc. and it doesn't change.