Multiple Simultaneous SQL Connection Timeouts In Multithreaded Windows Service

Question

I have a multithreaded Windows Service I\'ve developed with VS 2010 (.NET 4.0) which can have anywhere from a few to a few dozen threads, each retrieving data from a slow se

Answer 1

Optimizing the queries you are executing on the remote server will always help. Time each query and look for long running ones. If you are just doing reads then use the (NOLOCK) hint on the SELECT statements. This was a life saver for me. Just read up on it to make sure it is appropriate in your application. If you have access to the remote database make sure the indexes are not to fragmented. This will cause a major slow down in query execution. Make sure indexes are rebuilt/reorganized as part of the SQL maintenance plan. Add new indexes where appropriate.

Extending the timeout may make matters worse. If you let queries run longer then, potentially, more queries will time out. The timeout is there to protect the server and other clients accessing it. Bumping it up a little is not a huge deal but you don't want queries running for a long time killing the server.