Scheduled tasks, processes, imports and ODBC: errors and aborted

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When running tasks in the Task Scheduler, various there are various errors time-outs that can be reported. This post explains the differences and potential actions. Wiki

Table of contents

  1. Task ABORTED
  2. Task ERROR
    1. System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException
    2. System.Data.Odbc.OdbcException
    3. The operation timed out after hh:mm:ss (binding)

Task ABORTED

When the Task status says ABORTED, it means that the task was not finished within the time that has been set-up in the Time-out of the Scheduled Task.

It can be recognized by clicking on the Queued task:

2025-03-24 17:06:07.442: IN_QUEUE
2025-03-24 17:06:07.442: RUNNING
2025-03-24 18:06:07.530: ABORTED
The operation timed out after 01:00:00 (binding)

This means that time task did not complete within one hour. The Scheduling Services stopped processing. It does not necesarily mean that there has been an error, although when a task suddenly takes much longer than expected it could be an indicator for a problem.

The Task timeout can be set (in milliseconds) at the Scheduled task level. For your convenience, you can add two columns so you can see if the timeout is how you wanted it to be:

  • Scheduled task > Timeout (minutes)
  • Scheduled task > Timeout (seconds)

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Solution for ABORTED
When tasks abort, there are typically two solutions:

  1. Increase the time-out value. This is your action when there is a valid reason why the task needs more time
  2. Optimize your process to be faster or increase your server capacity

Task ERROR with System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException

Another error that might occur is the System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException, like below:

2025-04-04 04:05:08.565: IN_QUEUE
2025-04-04 04:05:08.565: RUNNING
2025-04-04 04:20:11.745: ERROR
Process returned with success=false
Exception type: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException
Exception: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

In this case, there has been a query that was performed by your Scheduled Task, which took longer than the SQL Query time-out in your application.

In this case, the Stack Trace often shows a hint which kind of process caused the time-out. In this case, it shows that there is an afterInser-process that didn’t finish.

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Here, the Event logging that has been available since 3.9 typically helps you to identify the exact cause. Using the time stap, you can typically identify the root cause.

Solutions

  1. Optimize your process to not run into a time-out (for example, using these tips)
  2. Increase the database time-out using database.commandtimeout in web.config

Increasing the Scheduled Task time-out will not have any impact.

Task ERROR with System.Data.Odbc.OdbcException

When running imports through ODBC-connections, you might run into time-outs or other errors.

Exception type: System.Data.Odbc.OdbcException
Exception type: ERROR [HYT00] [Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver]Query timeout expired

In this case, the query that has been sent through ODBC to the other (non-Novulo) database server, was not executed within the time-out.

Solutions

  1. Optimize the query so it performs faster
  2. Optimize the external database server
  3. Change the default query time-out at the target database server

At the moment of writing (10 April 2025) it is not possible to override the Query time-out from the Novulo ODBC connection.

Task ERROR with ‘The operation timed out after’

In some cases, you might see:

2025-04-10 14:15:03.729: IN_QUEUE
2025-04-10 14:15:03.759: RUNNING
2025-04-10 15:55:03.820: ERROR
The operation timed out after 01:40:00 (binding)

To solve this one, please refer to the same solution as ABORTED.

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