Dear All,

The following message comes from our Help Desk staff, and is largely
intended as background information for those who support BIDS users.  Can
you please circulate it to relevant people at your site.

Terry
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Terry Morrow (Marketing & Training)              E-mail:- [log in to unmask]
BIDS, University of Bath                 Telephone (direct-dial):- 01225-826277
BATH BA2 7AY, UK      BIDS URL: http://www.bids.ac.uk/      Fax :- 01225-826176
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A number of persistent problems have been received by the BIDS Helpdesk
over the last few weeks.  In some cases, it appears that the service
(usually the ISI Web service) is not behaving correctly.  A summary of the
common ones is given below, with possible explanations and solutions.

If you have any queries about this message, please contact the BIDS
Helpdesk on 01225 826074, or by e-mail at [log in to unmask]

1. "Document contains no data"
------------------------------
DESCRIPTION: This can occur at any time during the session.  In the past,
holding down the SHIFT key and clicking on the RELOAD (in Netscape) or
REFRESH (in Internet Explorer) button has usually cleared the problem and
this is worth trying, but recently another cause seems to have emerged,
and in this case the problem persists.

SOLUTION: Try SHIFT-RELOAD.  If this doesn't work, check the browser's
cache sizes.  It seems that the problem can be removed by setting the
DISK CACHE size to zero.  The size of the MEMORY CACHE doesn't seem to be
important.  If you're not sure how to do this, the BIDS Helpdesk will
advise.

2. Connection hangs
-------------------
DESCRIPTION: This can occur at the start of a session, and sometimes
when trying to download a document from ingentaJournals.  The browser
appears to make the connection to the server, but then hangs and nothing
is received (and no error message).

SOLUTION: This is usually caused by proxies or firewalls blocking access.
Check that the browser's proxy configuration is correct.  Your local
computing support will be able to tell you how to do this and what the
configuration should be.  The more likely explanation is that the firewall
is blocking access on certain port numbers (usually 8080 and 8000).  BIDS
currently uses these ports at certain stages.  The Helpdesk can provide a
list of host names and port numbers which the firewalls need to allow
through.  Note that some sites have several firewalls, so the problem can
affect some areas or departments, but not others.

3. Sessions timing out after a few minutes.
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DESCRIPTION: The system appears to respond with a message saying that the
session is invalid or has timed out, even though the user has been
interacting with the system frequently.  The system ACTUALLY times out
after 15 minutes of inactivity. It doesn't depend on the time of day, nor
does it discriminate against undergraduates.  Most of the services now
deliver a warning page 3 minutes before the logout occurs.  Sometimes the
timeout appears to be very short (less than 5 minutes) & no warning is
given.

SOLUTION: This is being caused by caching.  For some reason, an
intermediate system is holding cached pages and is delivering these,
instead of forwarding the request to the BIDS server.  The browser
receives this page & displays it.  Sometimes the page looks perfectly
correct (though it may in fact be very old), but sometimes it is a
previous page from this session, in which case it may look slightly
incorrect (often it seems to show that the marked list hasn't been
updated, when in fact it has).  The problem then appears when the user
clicks on a link on this page.  If the link's URL has expired and the
server thinks that the session has timed out.  Try clearing the browser's
caches. The Helpdesk can advise on this if necessary.  If this doesn't
work, then the page is probably being cached somewhere else.  Try backing
up the browser to get back to a page with a valid timestamp and then
follow a link off that (eg request the Easy Search page), since the
session in the server will be intact.

4. "Transaction timed out. Session may have crashed."
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DESCRIPTION: Attempts to connect from home using the "freeserve" ISP fail
during session startup.  The error message "Transaction timed out. Session
may have crashed." is received. The username works perfectly from a
terminal in the university.  The problem seems to happen most often to
people using Internet connections via "Freeserve".

SOLUTION:  At present we are unsure as to what is causing this, but we are
investigating.
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BIDS Helpdesk:      Tel: 01225 826074        e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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