Service Timeouts

When the BIS Request Handler passes a request to a service program, page rendering is suspended while the program performs the required processing. The service timeout value sets an upper bound on the amount of time that page rendering will be suspended.

The default service timeout is 30 seconds. This value can be changed in the following ways:

• The service timeout value may be globally set for all BIS sessions on the server with the BIS_SERVICE_TIMEOUT environment variable on BIS/IIS and with a Service Engine ServiceTimeout option keyword on BIS/Apache. The value must be specified in seconds. For example, on BIS/IIS:

  BIS_SERVICE_TIMEOUT=30

  This environment variable sets the timeout to 30 seconds. See Setting Environment Variables for information about setting and modifying environment variables on Windows, and Service Engine Configuration for information on configuring BIS on UNIX.
• The timeout may be set from within a .srf file by using the SessionParms(ServiceTimeout=seconds) tag. Note that this parameter is specified in seconds and takes effect as soon as the tag is rendered.
• The service program may set the timeout with the B$SetServiceTimeout call. Calling this function with a parameter of 0 restarts the timer without changing the current value. This is useful as a keep-alive function when performing lengthy processing.

Of the above, the BIS_SERVICE_TIMEOUT variable and ServiceTimeout option keyword have the lowest priority and are overridden by either SessionParms tag or the B$SetServiceTimeout call.