[FX.php List] Server is busy...please try again

[Jonathan Schwartz]

Thanks for the reply.

Let me be a little more clear...I WANT the message to display, both 
alerting the customer that there was a problem, and giving them the 
option to try again or come back later. Either of these is better 
than a browser timeout.

Jonathan

At 11:47 AM +1100 11/9/10, Tim 'Webko' Booth wrote:
>Dear Jonathan;
>
>>Hi folks.
>>
>>"Server is busy...please try again".
>>
>>You might see this message on a sophisticated airlines reservation 
>>web site, but not if a Filemaker web server is too busy or has a 
>>problem. The browser just times out.  This can be a real problem if 
>>a multi-step operation fails to finish before the time out.
>>
>>I need to install a fix for this eventuality for one client. My 
>>plan is to set a flag in an existing customer record before 
>>starting the operation and then resetting the flag upon completion. 
>>Any flags that remain set indicate a potential problem. This is 
>>possible when you are editing an existing record.  I am going to do 
>>that straight away.
>>
>>NOTE: We have learned (the hard way) that the answer is *not* to 
>>increase the browser expiration time. When there is a web server 
>>problem, the last thing you want to do is stack up queries that 
>>don't expire.  This *will* crash the web server if it hasn't 
>>already done so.
>>
>>But back to the "Server is busy...please try again" option....
>>
>>Would this involve having one server talking to a second server 
>>where the first server can return the friendly message before the 
>>browser times out?  Or, is this a job for javascript?  Has anyone 
>>done this before? I'm sure that it is commonplace in many 
>>industries, but is not in my bag of tricks yet.
>
>The problem is that XML engine is single-threaded, as far as I know.
>
>On a multi-connection database (like mySQL) you can check how many 
>connections, and then redirect to a Busy page if it's over a certain 
>number [1]...
>
>When there is only one connection, then a long request will clog it 
>for all the requests after as well.
>
>I can't think of a way to test easily without being part of the 
>issue, as it would then be another request, stuck behind the 
>long-running one... Happy to see if anyone else has an idea about 
>accomplishing this.
>
>Cheers
>
>Webko
>
>[1] the main reason our heaviest use systems are hybrid FM/mySQL, so 
>we can do something with excess requests - and mySQL can handle a 
>*lot* more requests in a given time period.
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-- 
Jonathan Schwartz
Exit 445 Group
jonathan at exit445.com
http://www.exit445.com
415-370-5011