Database Reference
In-Depth Information
internal and external components, all of which have their own timeout behavior.
For this reason, it is sometimes difficult to isolate the specific setting that is caus-
ing a particular timeout error. This chapter starts with describing why timeouts
occur and also provides the necessary tuning settings required at various levels
to overcome them.
A timeout occurs when an instance does not complete within a predefined
amount of time, the timeout period or threshold. The default timeout period of
Oracle SOA Suite 11g infrastructure is generally set to a low value. Compon-
ents such as the application server itself or a particular service engine has
preset timeout settings defined to prevent long-running processes from hold-
ing resources over an extended period of time. When a component's timeout is
reached, it returns an error to the instance, causing it to fail with a specific error
message and free up any resources held.
Having the right timeout settings depends on requirements such as how long it
is acceptable to wait for responses from end systems and the nature of business
processes that are running. Some environments require a longer timeout period
than others. For example, if all processes within a specific application server de-
pend on access to a slow, remote web service, it may make sense to increase
the overall timeout period for the application server. On the other hand, applica-
tions that prefer a rapid response and high throughput might benefit from lower-
ing the timeout, enabling them to react faster to a connection failure.
Similarly, it may be necessary to have different timeout values for separate
applications or components within a single environment. Consider a scenario
where there is a long running business process deployed on the BPEL and
BPMN engine, requiring the overall application server timeout to be set at a high-
er value to accommodate its processing window, while an all synchronous com-
posite application may require shorter timeout periods.
Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control and Oracle WebLogic
Server Administration Console allow you to set timeout thresholds at different
levels within the infrastructure. Here are some of the typical timeout error mes-
sages that you, as a system administrator, will encounter in your infrastructure:
