RE: LEI error: Method -Action [Truncate]- (2567) Daniel W Heichel 8.Dec.12 03:42 AM a Web browser LEI LEI - 8.0Linux
It sounds like these results are fairly reasonable. A 10GB database, even if it's mostly whitespace, would take a long time to parse through if, for example, you needed to do inserts, or check whether updates are needed for replication, or whatever is appropriate for the activity type you're using.
The second part is the timeout. You probably have a network timeout parameter set that only allows connections to stay open so long. Perhaps you have an LEI timeout as well. (LEI Administrator -> Server Document -> Maximum Duration of Activities).
Once you compacted the database, it became much more efficient, and I'd bet that your LEI activity execution time was much faster. The best thing to do here is exactly what you did - Compact the database to resolve the root of the problem.
If you simply had a huge database that you needed to use, that wasn't full of whitespace and couldn't be reduced, then you would either need to extend your timeouts, or break the activity into multiple smaller examples that will each run more quickly.