I have an operation which is prone to potentially timing out. I have already

increased the page timeout for this particular page, with the following near

the top of the page:



<%

    '# Allow for longer script timeout

    Server.ScriptTimeout = 300

%>



so have given it up to 5 minutes (and the operation may even run for longer

than this).



I have two questions:



1) Is there anyway that I can more cleanly handle a script timeout error. I

have surrounded the relevant COM object call in this manner:



function myFunc()

{

<%

        Err.clear

        on error resume next

    	call comObj.LongRunningServiceCall (areaID, itemID, _

	                            numbCols, numbIterations, _

	                            resultsCollection_o)



        if Err then

            failed = true

            errorText = Err.description & " - Error:" & Err.number & " from:

" & Err.Source

            errorDesc = Err.description

            response.write("alert(" & """" & errorText & """" & ", 0, " &

"""" & errorDesc & """" & ")" & vbcrlf)

        end if

%>

}



However when the script times out it does not get caught by the error

handler, since the script has timed out and is abandoned. The server nicely

sends out a timeout error, however since the ASP calling the component is

within a script block, not HTML, the error message is not seen.



I believe it may be possible to set the server up in such a way as to

redirect for this error (though this may not be applicable in this

instance). However I wish to handle this more cleanly inside the page

itself. 

Therefore my main question is: Is there a better way to handle a potential

script timeout?



2) The long running operation described above puts a heavy load on the

server. This affects other connected clients. 



I strongly suspect the longer script timeouts also knock the server's

performance, since the calling client's details must be retained until the

COM call has finished.



Using a larger script timeout puts an additonal heavier load on the server.

I am thinking that alternatively the process could be kicked off and left

(not sure how to close the calling page though) and then I could make a

fresh ASP poll call (by using the HTML refresh page interval meta tag: e.g.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" CONTENT=60>

to see if the results are ready (which would have been stored in the

database temporarily). 



Is this a more reasonable approach?



NB: We do not access the database directly through ASP, only through COM

components.