Hi
al,
I am
almost positive the answer is no, but I thought I'd see if anyone has come up
with a solution. All too often, we have some users that submit a large query,
then hit the STOP button on the browser, then change something and submit again.
In the meantime, their original query is still executing on the server-side.
Sure..Orion throws an exception when it tries to send the response back and the
connection to the browser is gone. But I am wondering if there is any way at all
to just kill that particular request. Like..is there some way the app server or
web server can send pings every say, 100ms to the browser to make sure its
connection is still alive..and if not, just kill the request in some manner.
Perhaps by having a special interface that an application can implement, so that
a particular method can be called if the server detects that the connection to
the browser is dead before the response has gone back. In this way, that method
call can get ahold of the session, and perhaps get ahold of a connection being
used, close it, etc.
Ofcourse, you can use some client-side javascript to
"disable" a button after its been clicked. We have done this, and we also
inserted a "transition" page in particular areas where long queries might occur.
In this case, the user sees an animated gif and a message that tells them not to
hit stop or back. Ofcourse..you're still going to get those users that do this.
My personal opinion is that if they call in, we tell them they are stupid, they
should unplug their computer and quit their job because they can't follow
instructions. Ofcourse..that wont fly, especially if they are a big money
client. Besides, its ethically wrong to screw your clients over.
;)
So,
one possible idea I have had is to do the following. Each user has a session
when they log in. Upon any request, a "flag" is set in the session of that user,
indicating a transaction is starting. If the user hits STOP, then submits while
that transaction is still going on, the server will see the flag is set, and
send back a response indicating that a transaction is currently happening and
they have to wait for it to be done before another submit can occur. There is a
plus side to this..it prevents any user to doing more than one thing. The down
side is, it is possible using the File -> New -> Window to open up another
window with the same cookie/sessionID and the user could actually go to a
different module and do MORE work at the same time. This would allow, for
example a large query to be performing in one module and they could go do some
work in another module. My method of a flag would prevent this type of
multiple-module capability. The solution, ofcourse is to allow one flag per
module, thus only one transaction per module could be performed, which is what I
intend to implement to at least keep the user experience at a satisfactory level
while preventing tons of form submissions from inundating the
server.
So
anyone had this experience and resolve it in some manner?
Thanks.
