SmartTarget Errors in log file - tridion

Question

I don't have any errors with my smart target application, but I do see in the event log, the following error messages:
ERROR 2012-09-19 14:30:09
com.tridion.smarttarget.utils.AmbientDataHelper - can't find defined
trigger-types in claim store (check if your smarttarget cartridge is
up and running)
and:
ERROR 2012-09-19 14:30:11
com.tridion.smarttarget.tags.TimeoutQueryRunner - The fredhopper query
timed out java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException at
java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(Unknown Source) at
java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(Unknown Source) at
com.tridion.smarttarget.tags.TimeoutQueryRunner.executeQuery(TimeoutQueryRunner.java:64)
ERROR 2012-09-19 14:30:11
com.tridion.smarttarget.tags.TimeoutQueryRunner - The fredhopper query
timed out
I would really like to understand what is causing these and how I can remove them. Or some suggested steps to help me debug this would be great :)
As I say, everything is working perfectly, later on in the logs I see the query to ST is correct and the results being generated.
In the event that is helps, I'm running on a 2009 implementation with Smart Target 2010, java 1.5.
thanks
John

Answer 1

Sounds like you might have a trigger configured in ST that does not actually exist in the ADF (or is mismatched). Have you looked through your trigger-types.xml file for anything obvious? Have you disabled an ADF cartridge but not removed the corresponding trigger in the XML perhaps? See the documentation for Defining trigger types.
I think your timeout is coming from the SmartTarget region rather than FredHopper. Sometimes a query that isn't already cached in FredHopper can take a while to return, even though it's ultimately successful. The ST query tag has a timeout (defined in the smarttarget_conf.xml file, or over-ridden with a tag attribute) that it will wait for a response from Fredhopper for before resorting to using the fallback content. This might explain why you see later in the logs that the query is correct and that results are returned. See the documentation for <tcdl:query>.
No conclusive answer for you I'm afraid, but I hope that helps.

Answer 2

The first error is logged if your SmartTarget cartridge is not running -- or if the data that it puts into ADF is lost somehow (e.g. you have disabled sessions in your web server).
In that case, SmartTarget will still do a query but it won't include anything from the Ambient Data Framework in it. If you don't have any triggers based on ambient data, the end result is the same for you.
To get rid of the error, make sure that smarttarget_cartridge is configured correctly.
As for the timeout error, it simply means that the query sent to Fredhopper took longer than the configured time. In that case it will show the fallback content instead. If this is happening a lot, you might want to increase the timeout within smarttarget_conf.xml.

Answer 3

I hope you found the issue, but for future reference, the first error message is raised when the claim "taf:claim:ambientdata:definedtriggertypes" is not set by the SmartTarget cartridge. This can be caused by:
SmartTarget cartridge could not load the the trigger types from the SmartTarget server. The log will show an error "can't retrieve list of defined trigger types from FH".
The HTTP session on your web server is expired during an active visit (the HTTP session expired but the browser is still open) and the claim is "lost".
The server does not support sessions like Peter mentioned.