PROFS: Bottleneck in MS-CSM Causes Multiple Requests

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Mail Gateway to IBM PROFS and OfficeVision, version 3.4

SYMPTOMS

The MS-CSM(Calendar Service Machine) goes into a looping, sends warning messages, and sends a re-send request to the LAN for each out-of-sequence free/busy distribution it receives from SCHDIST.EXE (from Microsoft Schedule+ for Windows).

The MS-CSM machine spends time and resources processing these requests, and this has been known to cause the MS-CSM machine to go into a loop, depleting about 80% of the VM system resources.

The expected behavior would be for the MS-CSM machine to generate only one re-send for the out of sequence distribution.

CAUSE

MS-CSM cannot wait while a free/busy distribution is being processed by the MS-CAL machine. Thus, if the next item in the MS-CSM machine's reader is a distribution update, a warning message is generated. The previous message is still being processed, which has delayed the MS-CSM machine from updating the SCHDPLUS CONTROL file with the CONFIRMED flag.

RESOLUTION

Halt the MS-CSM machine and purge all but one of the distributions, causing the MS-CSM machine to generate only one re-send request.