Web Service Timeout

[amir100]

Im currently developing client windows applications accessing web services. Im using VS.Net 2002. Now for the problems.

Timeout
It is to my understanding that sending synchronous web request will have a probability of experiencing time out. Im creating an instance of my web service with the name "mywebservice".

Now Im accessing a web service method; lets say Method1. When Im executing mywebservice.Method1(), I get "The operation timed out" exception message.

An immediate solution to this problem was setting the timeout property of mywebservice to -1: mywebservice.Timeout = -1

Done. Too bad that solution doesnt last long enough. It leads to problem number two.

Underlying Connection was Closed
Yupe. Its a System.Net.WebException. The client cannot retrieve the response because the connection to the web server is closed. Closed? After reading a few references I discovered that it is due to the connection being timed-out but the client still thinks its open. What the ... @_@

Adding to the confusion is that the exception doesnt always occurred. Sometimes the code works perfectly fine without a single exception. Whats with this behavior?

Im kinda stuck here. Id appreciate any help you have to offer.

But Ive already set the time

 

[PlausiblyDamp]

Out of interest how long is it actually taking for the call to complete?

 

[amir100]

Out of interest how long is it actually taking for the call to complete?

4 minutes in average.

Mind you that the exception only occured from time to time. It doesnt always throws the WebException I mentioned above. Ive tested it in three different clients.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[amir100]

Ive found the source of the problem. The problem lies within the "Connection Timeout" property of the Website. My testing server sets that property to 120 seconds. Which means I only got 2 minutes to send a request for a web service, execute the requested method, and retrieve the response from the web server. Since the average time of execution for the web methods is 4 minutes, the HTTP connection is closed by the server before the client retrieve the response. Hence I got the "Underlying Connection was Closed" WebException.

It looks like setting the Timeout property of each web service objects in the client to -1 isnt doing anything to prevent the web server from closing the HTTP connection.

I believe this has something to do with persistent connection and what-not. Ive tried a few trick to disable persistent connection from the client side but its not working. In the end the best fix was setting a higher "Connection Timeout" property in the IIS. I set it to 900 seconds (15 minutes).

Any comments? I was wondering what are the effects of increasing the "Connection Timeout" property. That and Im still looking for a better solution. Anyone have a better idea?