KB48019: What are the possible causes for a timeout to occur on the Intelligence Server when performing a SQLExecDirect ODBC operation in MicroStrategy 9.x?

QUESTION:
 
What are the possible causes for a timeout to occur when performing a SQLExecDirect ODBC operation on the Intelligence Server's side in Strategy 9.x?
 
 
ANSWER:
 
When a timeout occurs (during report or document execution), users may see the following error messages or a similar error message depending on the database and driver.
 
Sample Code/Error
Error type: Odbc error. Odbc operation attempted: SQLExecDirect. Timeout expired
 
Execute Query failed. Query time-out.
 
Error type: Odbc error. Odbc operation attempted: SQLExecDirect. Query timeout expired 
 
There are several settings on the Strategy side that could be causing the timeout to occur.

• In Strategy Desktop/Developer, go to Project Configuration > Governing Rules > Result sets. Here, users can specify the amount of time the Intelligence Server will attempt to execute an object before it times out (under Intelligence Server Elapsed Time), the "Wait time for prompt answers" and "Warehouse execution time".
   
  

• In Strategy Desktop/Developer, go to Administration > Configuration Managers > Database Instances. Edit the database instance for the warehouse against which the error is encountered and go to VLDB Properties... > Governing > SQL Time Out (Per Pass) as shown below. This controls the amount of time the Intelligence Server waits for a single pass of SQL to execute on the database-side.