Command timeout for Commerce 14

While we always want to have fast database queries, it is not doable all the time. Sometimes we need to run slow queries, and we need to tell the underlying framework that this query can take some time to complete, and we’re fine with it. Otherwise, it will try to terminate the query after 30 seconds (the default time out limit)

There is a different between connection timeout and command timeout. Connection timeout is the time .NET will try to connect to the database before giving up. Command timeout is the time .NET will try to execute a command before giving up.

With Commerce 13, we have a setting added in 9.23.1, as we talked here Episerver Commerce commandTimeout configuration – Quan Mai’s blog (vimvq1987.com) , however, in Commerce 14, it’s … different.

Things are a bit complicated when it comes to command timeout with .NET 5 and up. With later versions of Microsoft.Data.SqlClient, it is possible to set command timeout directly using connection string. It is indeed a simple way to do it, but with a caveat.

The new setting is not recognized by Entity Framework/Entity Framework Core, and it will throw exception if you try to access a connection string with command timeout setting. It has another way to set the command timeout itself by each DbContext , but it does not accept the setting via Connection string. It will throw “Keyword not supported: ‘command timeout'” if such setting is present.

The workaround is to configure the command timeout for EcfSqlConnection connection string, and another different connection string without command timeout just for Entity Framework.

However, that’s with a caveat: using command timeout in connection string means that value applies to all database queries. As we discussed in the previous post above, doing so is not without drawbacks – it hides slow queries rather than let it fails. A failed query might not bring down your website, but an overloaded database will likely do.

In Commerce 14.15.6 which should be released shortly, we introduce a new setting SqlDataProviderOptions.CommandTimeout which let you set the command timeout for queries that are using SqlDataProvider – most notably the MetaDataPlus system like orders.

The important advantage of the new setting is that you can set it on the fly. If you know that some operation will be slow, you can set the command timeout to a higher value just for that operation, then set it back to default value. In most cases, you can leave it to default value (30 seconds), and do optimization on application level (reduce batch size for example) or database layer (rewrite the query, adding/optimizing indexes etc.). But sometimes you know the query would be slow and you acknowledge that – this is the tool.