Specifying a timeout for a web service

You can specify the amount of time to wait for a web service response when invoking an outbound web service request.

Specify a value of timeout runtime property that is reasonable for your web service application. If the timeout value is set to an unrealistically short time, an exception might result even in a case where the web service invocation is successful. If the timeout value is set excessively long, performance might suffer because the system will be waiting too long before generating an exception.

Table 1. Web service timeouts
Property Default Value Description
timeout -1 Timeout in seconds to wait when invoking web service using SOAPConnector.
enable-wsdl-discovery-timeouts -1 Timeout in milliseconds to wait when loading a WSDL file. The value is used for the socket and connection timeout. It only affects the discovery that is performed by Business Automation Workflow during authoring and runtime, and not the discovery that is implicitly done by the underlying application server. Use the value 0 to disable the timeout. Use -1 to keep the default.
The timeout property specifies the maximum time (in seconds) to wait for a response to be returned.
  • The -1 value causes the property to be ignored, and 300 seconds is used for the request timeout.
You can use the following XML snippet to change these runtime properties in the 100Custom.xml file:
<server>
  <webservices>
   <timeout merge= "replace" >-1</timeout>
   <enable-wsdl-discovery-timeouts merge= "replace">-1</enable-wsdl-discovery-timeouts>
  </webservices>
</server>
For information about the 100Custom.xml file's location, and how to create, modify, and deploy it, see The 100Custom.xml file and configuration.