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Since upgrading to FME 2018 (32-bit version), I've been getting intermittent connection errors when using either my database connections or web connections.

There are times when I run my workspace without any issues, but subsequent runs may, inconsistently, produce connection errors.

If I go into my Database Connections or Web Connections through FME Options, I either get "Error retrieving connections", or it's "unable towhen the Testing the connection the test fails as it's unable to connect (i.e. "Unable to connect to Oracle database, because the database environment could not be initialized".

This is a known issue reported in FME Desktop 2018.0: (32-bit only) DB/Web connection failure: Java Virtual Machine (JVM) memory issue.

As mentioned in this article, a fix was introduced in Release 2018.1 which added a default HEAP SIZE of 128M. Unfortunately, this setting doesn't fix all the cases. Depending on the system, either a lower value or high value than 128M does the trick.

Go to the Control Panel > System and Security > System > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables:

  1. Create 2 NEW SYSTEM Environment variables

  2. FME_JVM_MAX_HEAP_SIZE=64M

  3. FME_JVM_MIN_HEAP_SIZE=64M

  4. If 64M doesn't work, try: 32M, 64M, 96M, 96M, 150M, 256M, 512M.

Note: The issue will be resolved completely in FME Desktop 2019, and can be seen in our latest FME 2019 Beta releases.


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