Override IBIF_max_messages in report ? [SOLVED]

July 17, 2008, 09:45 AM

Gene F.

The Controlling WebFOCUS Reporting Server Messages new features topic says:

quote:
IBIF_max_messages can be passed with the request, in which case it overrides the value set in the console

However, I have been unable to override that setting from within a report procedure. Neither treating it it as an option or as a variable works...

 SET IBIF_max_messages=0

 -SET &IBIF_max_messages=0;

So, can it be done from within a report, or is there some system setting preventing the override ?

Gene

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Gene F.,

July 17, 2008, 09:52 AM

Kamesh

Try this,

1. Go to your Tomcat folder and click the following exe file.

C:\Program Files\Apache Foundation\Tomcat\bin\Tomcat5w.exe

2. select the java tab, and increase the memory from the default (blank)
to 64 / 256 (min.max), and recyle Tomcat.

July 17, 2008, 11:34 AM

Darin Lee

Although, the setting was created to prevent out of memory problems, changing settings in Tomcat won't change anything with the IBIF_max_messages. It's a WF server setting so increasing the memory for the JVM won't affect how the server handles the setting. My understanding is that it can be passed in a procedure, but I'm not sure how that's done either. It can be changed in the server console, however. Will do some more digging.

July 17, 2008, 11:39 AM

Kamesh

I got this error earlier, after I changed the JVM setting it got resolved.

Trying things wont hurt. Neway we should dig in to the details as you mentioned and if we find a way, that will be helpful.

July 17, 2008, 12:55 PM

Darin Lee

Kamesh - he didn't say anything about getting an error - he just wanted to know how to override the server setting. As well, he may or may not be using Tomcat as his server as he has not listed any additional information in his profile. (Note to Gene - please update your profile with server and version information to get a more helpful response to your issues. Thanks)

I am assuming you are talking about the "Max Messages Exceeded" error, which may possibly be handled in part by doing as you suggest.

July 18, 2008, 03:58 AM

Frans

I changed this setting once. It's in the WebFOCUS Administration Console, and there somewhere under general settings.

July 18, 2008, 05:58 AM

Danny-SRL

Look into:
WF administration (client) console
Configuration
Client settings
General

The initial value is 20000.

July 18, 2008, 09:13 AM

GinnyJakes

And if you are getting that many messages, it means that there is something seriously wrong with your program. I'm not sure if Gene wanted to make it unlimited or not, but we find the default works just fine and in fact could be lower. A number that high makes the problem hard to diagnose because you don't get a page to look at. I always recommend to my users that they change the output format to html and reduce the number of rows so that they can see the error messages. Only then can they fix the problem that is causing the error.

July 18, 2008, 09:28 AM

<Marilyn Kay>

For what it's worth, this message sometimes indicates that a dialogue manager label may be duplicated so that a -GOTO may be resulting in a loop. I would carefully check the -LABELs in the focexec.

July 21, 2008, 10:50 AM

Gene F.

A little bit of background for my question about overriding the message limit...

Yes, I am getting the following error response when the customer selects a large number of foreign exchange deal templates to print out:

 <HTML>
<HEAD><Title>WebFOCUS Message [32100]: Messages limit reached, report retrieval aborted.</Title></Head>
<Body>
<H2>
<p>Reporting Server messages exceeded IBIF_max_messages, report retrieval aborted.
</H2>
<p>Please, contact your WebFOCUS administrator.
</Body>
</HTML>

The procedure is not in a "runaway" mode or in an infinite loop. The large number of messages is just a byproduct of the way the report is currently structured and asking for a fairly large number of templates to be processed. Each template produces 1 or 2 pages that are combined into a compound output. For each of the pages another procedure is called to perform the database access and generation of the report page. Each call to the second procedure is generating 19 or 20 message lines, which consists solely of the table access information (number of rows, etc.). The customer for which the error was discovered has over 640 templates. So, if the user selects 'ALL' templates for reporting we are looking at the possibilty of this many messages: ((640 * 2) * 19) = 24,320.

The original report only needed to process a single template per request. However, the capability to process multiple templates was later made a requirement and there was no time available to properly restructure the procedure; so, the original procedure was turned into an inner procedure and is now called by an outer procedure to process each of the selected templates in a serial fashion. Also, at the time the second (outer) procedure was created we were running WebFOCUS version 5.33, which does not have the IBIF_max_message limit.

That's the background. The options would seem to be:
1) Override the message limit.
2) Restructure the procedures.
3) Limit the number of templates that can be processed with a single request.
Doing #1 would be ideal, but only if it does not involve changing the limit for all reports at the server level.
Doing #2 is currently out of the question, there is no time available to redo this complex report.
Doing #3 is my fall back method if #1 cannot be done at the report level, and it is not the best solution from the affected customer(s) point of view.

So, back to my original question. Can the IBIF_max_messages limit be overridden on a per report basis as the documentation seems to suggest or not ? And if so, how ?

Gene

July 21, 2008, 11:20 AM

GinnyJakes

I don't know the answer to your question but have you considered turning messages off.

SET MSG=OFF

July 21, 2008, 05:10 PM

Gene F.

Ginny, that put a stop to those pesky messages. I never had to make use of that particular option before. It would be nice to have a definitive answer to my question about overriding the system limit, but for now I'll accept the suppression solution.

Thanks,
Gene

July 22, 2008, 12:08 AM

dhagen

quote:
Originally posted by Gene F.:

quote:
IBIF_max_messages can be passed with the request, in which case it overrides the value set in the console

The request - in this case - is the URL or your html form.

August 22, 2008, 12:20 PM

Gene F.

I ran across another report that would also get the message limit exceeded error. Tried turning off the messages with 'SET MESSAGE=OFF' just as I did with earlier report. But, that did not work when the report was processing a very large number of foreign exchange deals; it would still get the error even with messages turned off. Never could figure out what "messages" were still causing the error. The real fix was to override the IBIF_max_messages limit with an additional input field on the requesting html form.

 <INPUT NAME="IBIF_max_messages" VALUE="0" TYPE="hidden">

... just as dhagen pointed out in the last reply. It's a shame you cannot just set the limit with code within the report procedure itself.

Gene