While inserting huge amount of data into a table, sometimes I get this error message 'Timeout Expired' and my program stops.

But the same program runs well sometime later.

It is a simple insert query executed as many times as there are rows to be inserted.

Can anyone help me to understand this error please?

Thanks,
Bala.

How do you indert the data? Try to increase the CommandTimeout property to a longer time period.

when you do web based code the web server has a set amount of time to complete the execution of the code by. Say its five seconds. Well one time when your server is not heavily loaded like when your developing five seconds is more than enough. But when you have a table lock or a heavily loaded server or a list of other reasons that can cause your web server to run slower than normal. Your code may not execute in the 5 seconds that it's allotted. There are several ways to reduce the likelyhood of this. Stronger server is one, better internet connection another but generally the best solution is to keep the data on your individual pages small and not complicated and insure all your sql queries use indexes and don't return very much data. The most frequent time I see this is say for exmple on an order page. When there are 20 orders its not a problem but when you get to 5,000 orders it becomes a problem. The way to do this is to give pages of info at a time. Say only 50 rows of the 5,000 orders. Then require the user to request the next page of data, then the next, and the next, etc.

Thanks for the responses.

Yes, indeed I have now found that this has been happening whenever there are network connectivity issues (like too much of trafic on the network etc..) which actually slow down the connection to the database each time my query runs.

And when there are more rows inserted during these periods, I think it tis timed out.

I have even tried increasing the timeout setting. But I think the root cause is still the network connection to the server.