SAP Knowledge Base Article - Public

2043737 - Excel Report Time Out errors

Symptom

This documentation explains the points to be considered when it comes to Excel Report errors caused by a time-out during:  the report execution, by Inserting the Report via Excel Add in or when Refresh via Excel add in.

Most common error messages: 

  • Unexpected error in server communication
  • Unexpected error during backend processing
  • Out of Memory Exception

Environment

  • SAP Business ByDesign
  • SAP Cloud for Customer

Reproducing the Issue

Some Use Cases

  • Point 1:  Sometimes the excel report works fine and sometimes it doesn’t. Why?

                Just a matter of few KBs extra could create a difference. Number of rows alone is not the culprit; even more columns can make the data set larger.

  • Point 2: How many Rows is acceptable to Insert or Run a Excel report without the mentioned errors ?

For the same reason as Point 1, we cannot give a benchmark figure which says more than XX rows. It really depends on the data.

  • Point 3: Why do we not have an official documentation in the system which can precise or set the boundaries of Data Volume that cannot be viewed in an excel report?

                We cannot document this just as X MB of data volume, because this also depends on the client configuration. If there is a big RAM capacity, it's possible to process more XML data.

 So it all depends on the OS and the RAM and how much bulk allocation of RAM the system allows.

  • Point 4: Is there any plan to make such documentation available?

The development has agreed that we should have a benchmark and threshold document with all these parameters involved. We plan to make the excel Add in better by chunking the data in multiple calls so that end user could not frequently see this issue.

Cause

The large amount of data being fetched might leads to Time Out in the system response, as consequence the Excel Add-In throws an error. In such cases, the Excel add-in usually cannot handle such huge data, by resulting in memory exception.

Resolution

You can prevent the dump by using the Paging option. As consequence, the result rendering is very quick and the response time is improved. You may also need to reduce the report data by adding variables in the report selection.

With custom reports, it may be necessary to adjust the design to ensure optimal performance. Please check the KBA 2366796 for suggestions.

See Also

2143214 - Error When Opening Excel Workbook

2366796 - Best Practices for Modelling Data Sources and Reports - Performance

Keywords

Message was: The remote server returned an error: (500) Internal Server Error; Unexpected error in server communication; session needs to be closed; Exception System.Net.WebException; excel report, add-in, addin, time out, excel performance, business analytics , KBA , unexpected error in server communication , session needs to be closed , AP-RC-ANA , C4C, ByD, Travel: Analytics Tools & Frameworks , How To

Product

SAP Business ByDesign all versions ; SAP Cloud for Customer add-ins all versions ; SAP Cloud for Customer core applications all versions