Timeout Expired for DecommissionPublicationTarget

Question

While running the DecommissionPublicationTarget Core Service method on a well-used Publication Target I received the following error. The same code worked fine on a less-used Publication Target. I am using SQL Server 2013 and Tridion 2013 SP1:

A database error occurred while executing Stored Procedure "EDA_SYSTEM_DECOMMISSIONPUBLICATIONTARGET". Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. The wait operation timed out

Any ideas?

The method I am using is:

  client.DecommissionPublicationTarget("tcm:0-1-65537");

Answer 1

If you decomission a "well-used" publication target, a lot of PUBLISH_STATE records may have to be deleted (and associated indexes updated). That may take a long time; longer than the configured query/command timeout and/or transaction timeout.

Note that transaction timeout can be set per CM Session (Core Service client): client.SetTransactionTimeout

Also note that you can use a PowerShell cmdlet to decomission Publication Targets: Clear-TcmPublicationTarget