Hi Guys

We are trying to address the issue of long run times for reports from our portal. The problem is that reports will crash if they take longer to run than the IIS (or whatever server) timeout setting. For example in our setup we have IIS set to max 5 mins. After 5 mins the report dies.

What we would like to do is have a timer running in javascript after the report is submitted and after 4:58 has elapsed we will redirect the report as deferred mode.

Has anyone accomplished this? I had an old case open about it and I was instructed as to how to increase the IIS timeout setting. That, of course, is not what we want to do. Some of the reports could take one hour or one minute, depending on which params are selected as well as what else is going on on the servers at the time. We want the maximum flexibility. The bottom line is that the user might not know how long it will take and we don't want him to wait for 5 mins and then see an ugly error screen.

I will start experimenting with a javascript timer and document.form.submit with changed params... just wondering in advance if anyone else is doing this...

Thanks

Jodye

One thing you could do is force all jobs to run only as deferred and then the user can access the deferred status screen to check on the status of the job. No matter how long the report takes to run they can access it from there. Another option and an Add-on to WebFOCUS is Resource Governor. This builds a knowledge database on the statics on how long jobs run, what where statments, field, ... Then you could build Rules that say things like if the average elapsed time is greater then say 4 1/2 minutes send a message back to the user and tell them to run the job deferred.

Hope this helps

Jodye,

the way we've done it is to have a standardised layout of our parameter pages with 2 buttons, Run Report and Run Deferred. Each button calls a JavaScript which submits the form. I suppose you have some kind of idea of the average run time for each report. If it exceeds say 4 min, disable the Run Report button and only allow the users to run deferred. Maybe store the run time in some table and display it on the form. I know this is not exactly what you asked for, and if you do find a method to automatically redirect a job to deferred, I would be more than interested to know how.