PHP : script execution time limits

You have written severla scripts to parse 1000s of records from your database in real time and prepare reports in PHP..All is working well and one day you notice things screwing up for no apparent reason..well there ought to be a reason right? In my case it was larger than normal amounts of data that my CPUs couldn't crunch in time..

So in my /etc/php.ini, I changed

max_execution_time = 3600
max_input_time = 3600


So basically the php has a bit more time crunching the numbers and doesn't time out and give weird results :)

Hope this helps some other soul like me panicking at 2300 on a Christmas day as to what the F&*^ happened and why all reports went nuts!