Database stops returning results after a period of time

Hello all

I’m seeing strange behaviour from an internal application running with
the following general setup:

  • app is served by a single mongrel instance running on Windows
    Server 2003
  • the same server hosts an SQL Server 2000 database that uses
    trusted connections
  • sessions use ActiveRecordStore
  • running Rails 1.1.6 and Ruby 1.8.5

The issue is that, after a period of time, valid operations such as
Constant.find_by_value_and_group(@claim.loss_type,‘LOSS_TYPES_20’)
stop returning results.

Inspection of the production log doesn’t give any further insight into
the issue, nor do the Event Viewer logs shed any further light.
Restarting mongrel fixes the issue temporarily.

Has anyone experienced something similar or can you suggest a route to
investigate the problem?

Thanks
Nick