Asynchronous Behavior
Commerce Server Business Desk modules should not leave the user wondering whether Business Desk is still working or not. This means that operations that take a long time to complete should be performed asynchronously, with some feedback provided to the user indicating that the operation has been started and is being performed.
Any operation that could take more than 10 seconds to complete should provide an intermediate page with the status message: "Loading... Please wait." This is automatically displayed when initially loading a page and when a ListSheet HTC is executing a fetch operation via XMLHTTP.
Operations that could take in excess of one minute to complete, such as importing or exporting a catalog, or generating reports, should be designed in a truly asynchronous fashion. They should run on the server in a separate process, allowing the Business Desk user to perform other tasks in the meantime. The user should be informed that processing has begun, and there should be a page where the user can view the completion status of all such long-running operations.