LocalReport.Render does not return

[Oenone]

Sorry for the cross-post, but I'm not sure what the best place to post this
is, and I'm getting a bit desparate.

Part of our product uses the SQL Server Reporting engine to create reports
in Excel and PDF format. To do this I am using the LocalReport object the
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms namespace. This is all running in a
web-based service running in IIS.

In development and UAT this has worked flawlessly and had been very powerful
and convenient. Having just put some of our systems live, we are suddenly
running into problems that I am unable to work out how to resolve.

Everything works fine at first, but after the service has been running for
between 20 and 40 minutes, suddenly the report generation stops working.
I've added debug logging to the application, and can see that the last
statement that gets executed is a call to the LocalReport.Render method.
This never returns.

If we recycle the application pool, the reports start working again -- for
another 20 to 40 minutes. Then they stop, just as before.

Setting the application pools to automatically recycle every 20 minutes
seems like a very bad solution to this. I would really like to understand
why it is that the system is locking up. But without being able to step into
the source code for the LocalReport object, I'm completely at a loss as to
how I can resolve this.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I could try?

We're using VS2005 and ASP.NET v2.0, running in IIS6 on Windows Server 2003.

My thanks in advance,

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

Have you tried using the WebForms version? Usually when there are a WinForms
and WebForms versions of the same item it's due to the fact that the
WinForms version will not run in the ASP.Net threading model, or uses
services that are not applicable in that environment.

 

[Oenone]

Have you tried using the WebForms version?

Hmm, interesting, no I haven't.

The application in question can potentially be driven from both a web
service and also a Windows Forms application (it's implemented in a separate
DLL that can be used in either environment). I initially wrote it all in the
WinForms environment, and hence by the time I got to running it from the web
I'd forgotten all about the existence of the WebForms version.

As we're only using it to programmatically generate the report content
(we're not using the report viewer control at all), I just assumed that the
WinForms version would work correctly in both environments.

Anyway, I've rebuilt the application using the WebForms version of the DLL
(which was nice and easy), and have deployed that to our productions server,
now I just need to wait and see if it makes a difference. I'll post back
with the results.

Thanks for giving me something else to try!

 

[\(O\)enone]

Hmm, interesting, no I haven't.

Sadly this has exactly the same problem as the WinForms version. After
working fine for a little while, it ultimately stops returning each time it
is called.

Any other suggestions?