I’m currently on a team building Xcelsius 2008 SP1 dashboards using Query as a Web Service (QaaWS). I’d like to talk about the steps that we went through to increase the default timeout value of our executive dashboards. We’re currently evaluating SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.1 to see if it corrects some issues we’ve been encountering in XI 3.0, specifically regarding dropped sessions on Xcelsius+QaaWS dashboards that rely on the CELogonToken for the user’s identity.
Out of the box, the default timeout values for the web applications, the Web Intelligence Processing Server, and QaaWS are all 20 minutes. To increase the timeout, several activities are required.
1. Modify the session-config parameter to the desired number of minutes. For example, the default location for the InfoView web.xml is C:Program FilesBusiness ObjectsTomcat55webappsInfoViewAppWEB-INF
<session-config>
<session-timeout>60</session-timeout>
</session-config>
Do this for all web applications. According to the illuminating BusinessObjects Enterprise XI 3.0 InfoView and Central Management Console Session Management (available from the SAP Help Portal but sent to me by my good friend Bob Dissinger), it is “strongly recommended that when updating the time-out value for 1 web-app that all other web-apps are updated to an equal value.” So in addition to InfoViewApp, be sure to update AnalyticalReporting, InfoViewAppActions, PlatformServices, etc.
2. Next, modify the Idle Connection Timeout (minutes): parameter for the Web Intelligence Processing Server. Be sure to restart the server (off hours if a production system) so the parameter takes effect; the procedure for restart is a bit different in XI 3.x than XI R2.
3. Combined, the above two actions increase the timeout for Web Intelligence documents. However, a third modification is needed specifically for QaaWS. The value for the Enterprise Session timeout is modifiable by adding a property value to the dsws.properties file in the Web Services Provider web application. This file is found in the dswsbobje.war or BusinessProcessBI.war web application in the folder WEB-INF/classes.
# Increase timeout from 20 to 65 minutes. Value set in seconds
session.timeout=3900
This last step was uncovered by my manager, Alan Mayer, and is documented in SAP KB 1244342 (S-ID required). We opted to set the value slightly higher because we would rather a user get bumped off of InfoView rather than potentially see a dashboard become inoperative.
In a future post, I’ll describe the redesigned Query as a Web Service (QaaWS) application in XI 3.1, which sports an enhanced user interface compared to versions XI R2 and XI 3.0. I’ll also talk about the plumbing changes to QaaWS as well as the inclusion of QaaWS as a management area in the CMC (hooray – we have folders!). I’ll also tell you how we migrated Xcelsius dashboards and QaaWS from XI 3.0 to XI 3.1 and why we chose Windows 2003 Server 32-bit after a brief flirtation running XI 3.0 on WIndows 2003 Server 64-bit. Until then…
lots of good posts on BO stuff today. i feel lazy, but really can’t be bothered posting anything at the moment.. 😛
glad to hear your presentation went well 🙂
– Josh
Posts like this one are stuff that I need to write down “just for me”, but it usually doesn’t take much longer to share it with everyone else.
You’ll have to share some wisdom on your XI 3.1 migration between now and when your baby arrives. 😉
yeah, that’s true. the week i’ve had though, i don’t know how much i’ve been paying attention to the migration..! haven’t converted anything to webi yet, just brought across all the universes. and we will be installing LCM, so that should be interesting too 🙂
– josh
Hi Dallas and thanks for your post 🙂
I am having issues with my QaaWS timeout as well
Do you increase the time on dsws.properties by entering a new section like this
#############################
# Increase timeout 130 minutes. Value set in seconds #
#############################
session.timeout=7800
Or just modifying the parameter qaaws.session.timeout= to look like this:
qaaws.session.timeout=7800
Thanks
Aws
Angelo,
Either method is fine (with or without comments). The important thing to realize is that the session.timeout parameter isn’t in the file by default. So it has to be added – it’s not an existing line that requires modification.
I’m currently on a team building BO XIR3.1 using Webi on window 2003 server and error session timeout. how to set timeout value of webi.
joey
I’m currently on a team building BO XIR3.1 using Webi on window 2003 server and error session timeout. how to set timeout value of webi.
Joe
This time as per my knowledge only fix if you change the QAAWS, advanced paramters.
As per BO support, it is fixed in BO XI 3.0 FP3.
I wanted to confirm that you need both parameters in order to work otherwise session timeout happens in 20 minutes.
session.timeout=7800
qaaws.session.timeout=7800
Dallas,
If you want session time to happen after 7800 seconds, then one should change both parameters, in dsws.properties. session.timeout parameter is missing in the file. You need to add it as a new one.
#############################
session.timeout=7800
qaaws.session.timeout=7800
Dallas, I’m having an issue with tomcat crashing every 3-4 hours run. I have an Xcelsius dashboard, that refreshes every 15 secs using QAAWS. What would be the reasoning to having a longer QAAWS session time out? or in my case, should it be a lower session time out?
thanks,
Hey Dallas – I know this is old news, but we are having a similar issue now. We have a dashboard set to refresh every 15 seconds, but our session expires after 40 minutes. We want the dashboard to run all day but we don’t want to expand our session within the CMC past 40 minutes. Do you know if there is any way to override that specifically for a Dashboard?
Thanks for writing, Sarah. I haven’t had to solve this particular problem in a while and would encourage you to open an incident with SAP support.