Background Workflow steps taking many hours to execute

[Carolyn A Fuller]

Hi all,

I have just recommended that the Basis team change the schedule to have RSWWERRE run every 20 minutes instead of every 90 minutes. That should help significantly. 

But I'm still curious what the underlying error could be. I poured over the workflow logs associated with several "hung" workflows and could not find any indication of any errors. I looked at SWWLOGHIST and there is nothing (see attached PDF for table rows belonging to one problem work item).

Also, I studied the method and walked through the debugger for this particular problem. The method in question checks a custom table to see if the user wants to receive email notification and, if so, sends the email notification and updates a custom log table. But in this particular instance, the user did not want to be notified so no email notification was sent - therefore, no update to the custom log table. 

Since there was no table update, I don't see how there could have been a lock encountered and, yet, the step did not complete until the scheduled run of RSWWERRE. 

So why?????

The problem workflows hang on different background steps. The only thing these steps have in common is that they are all background steps. But I think the majority of them do involve updates to tables entries that could easily be locked. So I do think locks are most likely the culprits but how do I find out for sure?

Thank you all for your help. It is greatly appreciated.

Carolyn

On Nov 12, 2010, at 6:36 PM, Rick Bakker wrote:

> Carolyn,
> 
> I would reschedule it to run every 20 mins, which is the default. Then
> your users won't complain so much!
> I can't say I've ever seen a temporary error that wasn't a lock. I
> would try looking in the workflow log via various views (technical
> etc) and if that doesn't help try looking in the tables. Not sure
> where this is stored, maybe SWWLOGHIST?
> 
> How to avoid the locks, that's not easily answered. It depends on a
> lot of things. What is the step actually doing?
> 
> regards
> Rick Bakker
> hanabi technology
> 
> On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Carolyn A Fuller <fuller at mit.edu> wrote:
>> Rick,
>> RSWWERRE is scheduled to run every hour and half:
>> 14:10:05
>> 15:40:05
>> 17:10:05
>> The step in question was just attempting to send email. What errors could
>> have been encountered that RSWWERRE would have cleared up? Is there anyway
>> for us to trace what the errors are?
>> Thank you so much for your help.
>> Carolyn
>> On Nov 12, 2010, at 6:11 PM, Rick Bakker wrote:
>> 
>> Carolyn,
>> 
>> You can usually tell from the step history that there's been a
>> temporary error (e.g. locking) by the presence of yellow triangles.
>> 
>> I don't see them here but note that it does have RSWWERRE in there -
>> that's the workflow error job that would resolve temporary errors.
>> Usually it tries every 20 mins for 3 times = the 1 hour delay you saw.
>> Look in SM37 to see how often that job runs.
>> 
>> regards
>> Rick Bakker
>> hanabi technology
>> 
>> On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Carolyn A Fuller <fuller at mit.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Rick,
>> 
>> I don't see anything in the step history that indicates errors. I'm
>> 
>> attaching a snap shot of the step history. Am I missing something?
>> 
>> Carolyn
>> 
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>> 
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>> 
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>> 
>> ---
>> 
>> Carolyn Fuller
>> 
>> Senior Analyst/ Programmer
>> 
>> Information Services and Technology
>> 
>> 
>> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
>> 
>> Room W92-210
>> 
>> Cambridge, MA 02139
>> 
>> (617) 253-6213
>> 
>> http://fuller.mit.edu/
>> 
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