Logicsheet transformation happening but XSP not running

[Phil Coultard <ph...@coultard.com>]

Hi,
 
Problem: use of internal pipeline transforms xsp logicsheets but the
resulting xsp doesn't run: just gets spat out as xml.
 
I have been using Cocoon for a number of years but only really as a
development engine used for aggregation and xml transformations for static
sites. Over the last few months I have been developing a fully fledged
e-commerce application with it and when it works I have found it to be
excellent... Most problems despite my cursing have turned out to be of my
own making but this one I just cannot work out.
 
In brief I have a site which consists of many files each for a different
purpose (eg productlist.xsp, orderedit.xsp) but they all share another xsp
file called menu.xsp which contains the menu structure. This is obviously to
avoid duplicating it. Menu.xsp must be an xsp because it shows links (eg
View Order) based on whether a session orderid is null or not. When one of
the 'public' files is called eg productlist.xsp the generator calls an
internal pipeline which performs the include so that the whole can then be
treated as serverpages and the xsp compiled and run.
 
Now that all works fine and dandy in pages that don't contain Logicsheets.
BUT sometimes when a call is made to a page with a logicsheet in it the
resulting page will just contain the result of the logicsheet transformation
rather than what I would expect ie the result of having run what would be
the resulting xsp. The annoying thing is that this only occurs sometimes,
and should I restart Tomcat (having deleted the work dir) everything is fine
and its as if Cocoon looks around innocently and says "what, ME not compile
the xsp... no NEVER!?!" then if I continue making requests, at some point in
time it will do the same. This happens if I make the same request over and
over again so it is not a change in other variables. One thing I should
point out is that I am using logic sheets within logicsheets eg my custom
logicsheet also uses the esql logicsheet.
 
There are no errors in the sitemap unless the processing of the document
requires some bit of xsp which hasn't been run eg where I have used Java
code directly eg
intOrderID = new Integer(<esql:get-int column="intOrderIDOut"
from-call="yes"/>);
 
What I cannot understand about this behaviour is that it happens so
inconsistently: there it is happily serving the same page and then all of a
sudden it will just fall flat on its face. Could it be related to available
resources?
 
Cocoon 2.1.7
Windows XP
Java j2sdk1.4.2_07
Tomcat 5.5
 
Any help or suggestions would be gratefully appreciated
 
Thanks in advance
 
P. Coultard