[thelist] BIIIIIG tables - HTML or ASP Limitation?

Luther, Ron Ron.Luther at COMPAQ.com
Thu Apr 5 09:53:15 CDT 2001


Hi Folks,


Many Many Thanks for the tips and ideas!!

Script Timeout:
Ryan, Nicole, Scott and other folks pointed out the script timeout parameter
as a good place to start looking and tweaking.  Yep, that IS a good place to
start looking. I'm not sure how much 'control' I have over that here but
it's certainly an area that I can suggest be more fully investigated.
However, I'm thinking Tab and Martin are more on track here -- I think the
browser is timing out because it thinks the connection has been lost. {Sorry
Nicole - my bad - I should have noted that I'm not getting any error message
at all .... it just seems to drift off and be 'lost in space'.  In my haste,
I forgot that the lack of any error message is, in itself, a diagnostic hint
to what is going on.  Oooops.}


Paged Recordsets:
Nicole and Tab reminded me about paged recordsets.  Good point.  I wasn't
thinking they could be used for this particular application ... but that
most likely means I'm locked into "one way" of thinking on this project and
I should probably think through the entire application again 'cuz I might
have missed some potential alternatives. Rats!


Non-Parsed Headers / Buffer Flushing:
Martin, Tab - I think you two hit the nail on the head ... I think it's a
browser "timeout" instead of a script "timeout" and that flushing the buffer
at the record level would be a good thing to try.


Multiple Tables:
Norman - cool idea! ... Yeah, it adds some "bloat" ... and it will probably
play bloody hell with the 'homegrown com object' we have to allow user
export of tables to Excel ... but even if I don't use it here I'm sure it
will come in handy on some other project ... thanks!


I thought about this driving around last night and this morning. I think
I've got three alternatives to look into:

(a) [Least Effort] - I'll see if flushing the buffer at the record level
takes care of the problem. 

(b) [More Effort] - Suppose the non-parsed headers work and retrieve all the
rows to the page.  What's the user going to do next?  (sigh) Export the
results to Excel. .... so I was wondering (while driving around) if I could
flush a continuation dot [Those "Waiting ........" dots.] to the browser
after every thousand records processed while I write a CSV file containing
the data.  After the data is written I could flush a "Click here to see the
results" link to the browser, tear down the connections and close the buffer
and the users could pull up the results in Excel.  {Next step might be
having the IM guys "schedule" a nightly job to populate that CSV and merely
keep the link in the report.}

(c) [Different Approach] - This is for an Intranet.  I have one of those
"Enterprise Intranet reporting tools" in my toolbox. The 'look and feel'
would be a little different - but it wouldn't time out, it would return BIG
recordsets, and it would give the users comparable functionality.  {... and
the client has "okayed" this as a fallback position ...}


Thanks Again!!!

RonL.





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