Setting the Session Inactivity Time

The default inactivity timeout value for a BIS session is 600 seconds (10 minutes). However, the inactivity timeout value can be changed in several ways:

• The timeout value may be globally set for all BIS sessions on the server with the BIS_SESSION_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT environment variable on BIS/IIS and the Service Engine InactivityTimeout option keyword on BIS/Apache. The value must be specified in seconds. For example, on Windows:

  BIS_SESSION_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT=600

  This environment variable sets the timeout to 600 seconds (10 minutes). See Setting Environment Variables for information about setting and modifying environment variables on Windows, and Service Engine Configuration for information on configuring BIS on UNIX.

• The timeout may be set from within a .srf file by using the SessionParms(InactivityTimeout= seconds) tag (see The {{SessionParms}} Tag). Note that this parameter is specified in seconds and takes effect as soon as the tag is rendered.
• The service program may set the timeout with the B_SetInactivityTimeout call. Note that this call does not take effect until the next time the service program interacts with the BIS Request Handler; that is, the service calls B_ReadRequest and BIS renders an XMLExchange tag.

Of these, the BIS_SESSION_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT variable and InactivityTimeout option keyword have the lowest priority and are overridden by either the B_SetInactivityTimeout call or the SessionParms tag.

The largest value that the session inactivity timeout interval can be set to is 1,000,000 seconds (about 11 days).