Couple of inquiries this week around the default timeout for BIP 11g installs and being able to change it. Its not currently documented (Leslie is working on that :) and when you see what you need to do you might understand why. It's ugly, very ugly but in the interest of getting the information out there, here we go.
The BIP session timeout is controlled in a section in the web.xml file under the WEB-INF directory.
<session-config>
<session-timeout>30</session-timeout>
</session-config>
The weblogic server (WLS) has a couple of features that are one, a pain and two useful. The first is the inability to update the web application's web.xml and have the changes take effect when you restart WLS. So far in my web diggings, I have found that you have to completely delete the application from WLS, update the web.xml and then re-deploy it with your new settings. Here's the steps:
- Locate the xmlpserver.war under the MW home and back it up somewhere.
- Log into the WLS console >> Deployments
- Delete the BIPublisher entry. BIP is now gone from the server
- Back to the war file. Unpack it, preserving directories
- Go into the WEB-INF directory and edit the web.xml file and
increase the timeout value and save the file. The setting is in the session-config section:
<session-config>
<session-timeout>60</session-timeout>
</session-config> - Zip the war back up preserving the directories
- Back in the console UI goto Deployments and 'Install' the BIP war file. Just accept all the defaults.
- You can now log into the BIP application and the new timeout will be applied
It's messy I know but it works. Now, some of you may have found the page in the WLS console application that allows you to set a session timeout. Naturally, you'd think this would work if you changed it (that's the other feature of WLS that is useful.) The web.xml setting however, takes precedence over the WLS setting.
I have not tried this yet but I have been told that, if you remove the session-config section from the web.xml file and then redeploy BIP, the WLS setting will be respected. It's gotta be a better way to manage sessions. Just remember that until the development team either provide a better way to do it or remove the default time out in the web.xml file you are going to have to maintain your timeout method if you patch or upgrade.