Setting Report Execution Timeout for an Individual Report
As a part of our business requirements gathering process in the Objective and Business Scenario section earlier, we learned that one of the reports administered by the DBA would need to have an exception timeout value applied. The Product Line Sales report, which we cloned and renamed RS015 to safeguard the original for the time being, has been described as "mission critical," and is expected to run somewhat longer than other reports. We ask the DBA for an acceptable timeout setting for the report, and he replies that 35 minutes would be a good value.
Let's impose this exception from the default Report Execution Timeout at the level of the report in question, by returning to Report Manager and taking the following steps.
1. Return to Report Manager - Home page.
2. Click the RS015 folder, created when we published our clone of the Product Line Sales as RS015, as shown in Illustration 28.
The report and its data source connection appear, as depicted in Illustration 29.
Illustration 29: RS015 and its Data Source Connection Appears
3. Click the link for report RS015 to open it.
The report begins to execute, based upon the default parameter entries that appear.
4. Click the Properties tab, atop the report window, as shown in Illustration 30.
Illustration 30: Click the Properties Tab
5. Click Execution, a link in the upper left of the Properties page, as depicted in Illustration 31.
Illustration 31: Click Execution ...
We arrive at the Execution page for report RS015. Here we will override the "global" Report Execution Timeout, and specify the timeout value for this specific report.
6. Under the bottom section of the page, titled Report Execution Timeout, click the radio button to the immediate left of Limit report execution to the following number of seconds.
7. Type the following numeric value into the box that follows Limit report execution to the following number of seconds:
2100
The Report Execution Timeout section, with our modifications, appears as shown in Illustration 32.
Illustration 32: Report Execution Timeout Settings Section
8. Click Apply to accept and apply our settings.
We have thus set the clone of the Product Line Sales report to time out at 35 minutes, in accordance with the requirement expressed by the DBA. In like manner, the timeout value for any report can be individually modified as an exception to the "global" Report Execution Timeout value we enforce within Site Settings for Reporting Services.
9. Click Home in the Global Toolbar to return to the Home page of Report Manager.
10. Close the browser, closing Report Manager, when ready.
NOTE: Be sure to remember to restore all timeout values set in the article as appropriate for your own Reporting Services environment.
Summary and Conclusion ...
In this article, we discussed the use of the Report Execution Timeout parameter as a means of control over report processing demands within Reporting Services. After preparing for our practice exercises by creating a "clone" report, and then creating a Visual Studio .NET project to house it, we published the report with a working data source connection to use within the session. We then focused upon the default settings for the Report Execution Timeout, changing the setting as the first steps of our practice exercise.
After getting some hands-on exposure to setting the global Report Execution Timeout, we examined the "sweep" setting in the Reporting Services Configuration file, and discussed how it interacts with the Report Execution Timeout setting, to bring attention to the fact that the injudicious use of the setting can render our Report Execution Timeout ineffective. Finally, we extended our practice session to include setting Report Execution Timeout at an individual report level, as a means of demonstrating how we might obtain exceptions to the global Report Execution Timeout setting we made of Reporting Services at the Site Settings level.
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