Increasing the DDE timeout period

[Bill Thoen]

Does anyone know how to increase the length of the timeout when calling
another application from MapBasic using DDE? I've got an application that
calls MS Access to run a macro and on some machines it doesn't get back to
MapBaisc in time before the timeout period elapses.

I could trap the error and not worry about it because it seems like
everything executed anyway, but I feel like I need to be able to eliminate
this problem rather than just sweep it under the rug. The odd thing is that
the machine that's timing out is quite a bit faster than my development
machine and it's using MS Access 2003, while I'm using old Access 2000.

TIA,

- Bill Thoen

[Nathan Woodrow]

Hi Bill,

In Access you can change the OLE/DDE timeout settings in the Options.
In access 2000 you can go to Tools->Options->Advanced and there is a
setting there that you can change, I would think that access 2003
would have it there too. There is a downside, access 2000 you can
only set the maximum to 300 sec, hopefully this is enough time for
access to get back to the MBX.

Hope this helps.

Nathan Woodrow
GIS/Asset Support Officer
Warwick Shire Council
Ph: (07) 4661 0463
Email: NWoo...@Warwick.qld.gov.au
152° 2' 4.00812" -28° 12' 52.443864"

[Martin Hodder]

HI Bill,

For Mapinfo you add a registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MapInfo\MapInfo\Common and add a "DDETimeout"
value. Then you enter a time in milliseconds.

Regards

Martin Hodder
Higher Mapping Solutions
www.highermappingsolutions.com

[Warren Vick, Europa Technologies Ltd.]

Don't you just love these little secret nuggets of information?!

Regards,
Warren Vick
Europa Technologies Ltd.
http://www.europa-tech.com

[Bill Thoen]

Warren Vick, Europa Technologies Ltd. wrote:
> Don't you just love these little secret nuggets of information?!
>
>

I'm always amazed that no matter how esoteric a question you ask about
MapInfo in this forum, there's nearly always a small group of experts
somewhere who know the answer. And of that elite group, there's always
one or two who will take the trouble to post the answer. A good mailing
list is an amazing resource; something you can't even buy as a MATS
option. Of course, we've had our own Mats for years anyway, so we're
still ahead of the game! ;-)

- Bill Thoen

[Bill Thoen]

When calling other Windows applications with DDE from MapInfo, the DDE
timeout period is sometimes too short, and you get a "Process failed in
other application" error. So I asked the list how I could reset this to
a longer period. thanks to Harold DeMooy, Martin Hodder and others
here's the answer:

Harold DeMooy wrote:

> You need to add a registry key
>
> Under the local machine hive under \software\MapInfo\MapInfo\Common
> (if you have update your version of MI several times the second
> MapInfo may be replaced by a version number i.e. \850\Commmon).
>
> Edit Add new key (String value) then a dialog asking the value which
> you enter in milliseconds (default is 60000 or 60 seconds) we have
> used values as high as 360000 - 6 minutes When you are finished the
> ...\Common directory will show the new key (using 2 minutes as value)
>
> DDETimeout REG_SZ 120000
>

Martin Hodder wrote:
> For Mapinfo you add a registry key:
>
> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MapInfo\MapInfo\Common and add a "DDETimeout"
> value. Then you enter a time in milliseconds.
>

Thanks again for the excellent help!

- Bill Thoen