I'm still plugging away, but now I've stumbled across a problem that is really important to me.

I am doing searches of FlightHistory, and I am doing searches by airline, origin and destination. I did all my testing with United and American, and it seemed to work great.

I was ready for a huge chance to show it off, but I need my Virgin America results to work. Unfortunately, I'm not getting any results for flights beginning VRD.

This is pretty important to my project. Can you do any investigation today? I can share more details about the exact query, but I'm pressed for time on something else and could do that later if you need it. I think this is a problem that will surface quickly with a little testing on your end.

THANKS!!!!

Hey J! Can you cut-and-paste the query you're using? I had no problems pulling things up here...

This turns up a nice selection of recent flights for United:
dept=='sfo' && dest=='las' && left(ident,3)=='UAL'

This doesn't return anything:
dept=='sfo' && dest=='las' && left(ident,3)=='VRD'

Your online flight tracking app confirms that there are scheduled flights along this route.

Hmmm. Why don't you go ahead and cut-and-paste the entire command string you're using... when I use that query, I get 10 flights back. It took 20 seconds, but I did get them back. (You might also check the timeout for your web service configuration).

Just so you know, we're probably going to have to remove the FlightHistory function and change it to just display the last 10 flights of any given flight ID (to be called PastFlights). Complex queries through the current FlightHistory function can take far too long to process, and can really eat into the server in such a way that it makes it cost un-effective to provide.

I don't know how much of the PHP you want to see, but here's the one line ($query is what I just sent you):
$history = $PlaneXML->FlightHistory($query, 9);

I'm not printing out the error I get back. But you're right that I did notice a timeout error when I was requesting before certain dates or for more than 9 results (sometimes). It seemed like a query would fail once, then it would work on the 2nd or 3rd try. So maybe the issue of slow responses resulting in timeouts is really the cause.

But I don't think it's a problem on my side. It's not like my page fails. I get a specific result for $history that says something about a timeout, so I think this message has to be coming from your end.

And why would it always work for AAL and UAL, and always fail for VRD?

And, I'm concerned about losing the ability to query FlightHistory. That was the one big advantage you had over other providers from my view. If it just displays recent flights, it kind of defeats the purpose of your awesome historical database. (But more on this later - we can stay focused on VRD for now.)

Jeral

Yeah; what happens is that even though it fails on a timeout, the database server is continuing to process the query. Once it's done, it then caches the results (or the indexes) so that when you run the request a second or third time, it runs successfully, or runs a little faster.

These issues, in addition to others, are part of the primary reason for removing the FlightHistory feature; its just not ready for Prime Time :(

The reason for AAL and UAL is that they fly more often, and its easier for the system to find results to return. As for the timeout; generally speaking, the timeout is specified on the client side. In the .NET examples we have, we can increase the timeout on the client side, which helps things out a bit.

Can you be more specific about where I'd increase the timeout? It seems like it would have to be in one of these 4 lines, unless PHP times out the API call in line 4 and continues to the next line. In that case, just give me a .NET example and I'll figure out the PHP equivalent.

Thanks!

$wsdl_url = 'http://planexml.flightwise.com/ws/PlaneXMLbeta2.asmx?WSDL';

$WSDL = new SOAP_WSDL($wsdl_url,$auth);

$PlaneXML = $WSDL->getProxy();

$history = $PlaneXML->FlightHistory($query, 9);

Well, in .NET, there is a property on the web service class that you instantiate called "Timeout", so in the following:

Dim PlaneXML as new com.fboweb.PlaneXMLbeta2

You'd use:

PlaneXML.Timeout=20000

This would set the timeout to 20 seconds. This probably isn't too helpful to you, but it's the best I can offer at the moment... :)