ASP.NET: Prevent Long-Running Page from timing out

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On some occasions you may have a database query or other operation that takes a long time. If it takes long enough, your ASP.NET Page may timeout.

Obviously, you want to optimize your SQL or other process, but if you can't you can control the Page Timeout via the httpRuntime element's executionTimeout attribute. You can set the timeout value for a request in web.config. You can even change the timeout for one specific page:

<location path="yourpage.aspx">
<system.web>
<httpRuntime executionTimeout="180"/>
</system.web>
</location>

The httpRuntime element is not explicitly defined in the Machine.config file or in the root Web.config file. However, the following settings are the default values initialized by the system. If you need to customize this section you must create it in your configuration file and define only those attributes that need customization:

<httpruntime
enable="true"
executiontimeout="110"
maxrequestlength="4096"
requestlengthdiskthreshold="256"
usefullyqualifiedredirecturl="false"
minfreethreads="8"
minlocalrequestfreethreads="4"
apprequestqueuelimit="5000"
enablekerneloutputcache="true"
enableversionheader="true"
requirerootedsaveaspath="true"
shutdowntimeout="90"
delaynotificationtimeout="5"
waitchangenotification="0"
maxwaitchangenotification="0"
requestpriority="Normal"
enableheaderchecking="true"
sendcachecontrolheader="true"
apartmentthreading="false"
>

See http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e1f13641.aspx for more details.

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous10:30 AM

    Hey, that's aweomse! This was the first thing I learned today - Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg11:15 AM

    aweomse? is that a dyslexic "awesome"? You are forgiven, my son. Thanks for the compliment :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:34 PM

    Great and useful info, Peter. I was just working on an image gallery and had some timeouts. Used some of your caching tips from eggheadcafe and will put some of this info to use as well.

    ReplyDelete

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