Scheduling jobs allows you to create schedules to manipulate the operational states (start, stop, and pause) of connectors and collaborations. By manipulating component states, you can better manage how InterChange Server Express processes events. You can distribute the server's workload over scheduled time periods, thereby reducing traffic and allowing for more efficient resource management. This section covers the following topics:
"Enabling or disabling schedules"
Scheduling jobs is done through the Schedule window (see Figure 14). From the Schedule window, you can create, modify, and delete scheduled items. You can see a list of all the schedules that are defined for components, or selectively view schedules based on your requirements. You can also enable or disable all schedules on the server.
When you create a schedule for a component, you supply information such as when and how often (recurrence) an action (state change) occurs. By default, no schedules are defined for a component. You can define as many schedules as you want for a component. Once a schedule is set, you can enable or disable its use.
The Schedule window allows you to determine the following items:
If you choose to make the schedule recurring, you can choose from several options including daily, weekly, or monthly.
Because each schedule consists of one action that occurs at a specified time, to create an interval when the server processes a component, you must define both a schedule to start and end processing. As an example, for a connector, you can create one schedule to start processing events at 1 A.M., and another schedule to pause processing at 3 A.M., daily. Only during that two-hour time period can the connector deliver events to InterChange Server Express for processing by collaborations that subscribe to that connector.
When you schedule the connector operation, the state you select (start, pause, or stop) determines to what extent work is processed. For example, when you start a connector, it constantly polls an application for new events. When you pause a connector, it stops polling until started again, but is still able to handle service call requests from InterChange Server. A stopped connector is inactive.
By manipulating connector activity with collaboration activity, it is possible to schedule dedicated event processing for an application during a specified time window. To do this, both the collaboration and connector must be running during the same time interval. If the connector was paused, events that were queued can be processed when the connector resumes its activity.
As with connectors, when you schedule the collaboration Object's operation, the state you select (start, pause, or stop) determines to what extent work is processed. To review the collaboration states, see "Collaboration object states". For example, when you start a collaboration object, it processes the business objects that it receives from connectors. When you stop a collaboration object, all subsequent events are ignored. So unless you must stop the collaboration object, pause it instead.
When you pause a collaboration object, events remain in the collaboration queue until you restart the collaboration object.
By manipulating collaboration object activity with connector activity, it is possible to schedule dedicated event processing for an application during a specified time window. To do this, both the collaboration object and connector must be running during the same time interval. By assigning different processing windows to collaboration objects that are bound to the same connector, you can distribute the workload, and to some extent, control the amount of traffic a connector must handle. For example, in Figure 15, each collaboration object gets a dedicated time period when the connector is processing only that collaboration object's events.
Figure 15. Dedicated
processing
Multiple collaboration objects can subscribe to the same business object. In that case, the object is sent to InterChange Server, where it remains until it is picked up by each collaboration object that subscribes to it, when the collaboration object is started after being paused.
Using System Monitor, you can override the state of a scheduled component (for example, start a collaboration object that the scheduler stopped a few minutes ago). Or you can set it to a state to one that the scheduler cannot change. For instance, if a collaboration object is scheduled to pause, you can stop it, not allowing the scheduler to pause it (a collaboration object cannot transition from stop to pause). In such a case, the scheduler does not override the manual change, but logs an error instead.
To create a schedule for a collaboration or a connector:
A new line entry with the name and type of the component is created in the Schedule window (for example, ClarifyConnector (Connector)).
An enabled schedule is effective as soon as you click OK or Apply; a disabled schedule is immediately dormant until enabled. When a schedule is disabled, the Next Occurrence cell is blank to indicate there is no scheduled occurrence for this schedule item.
By default, the current date and time are set. Use the MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss format. A 12 or 24 hour clock is used, based on the Time format configured in the Preferences window, which is available from the Edit menu.
For example, the schedule for a connector is created in New York (select Eastern Standard time) while InterChange Server Express is located in Japan. InterChange Server Express uses this information to determine the local time for the schedule so it can run the job at the appropriate time.
If you do not enable the recurrence option, the Next Occurrence field is blank and the schedule expires after it runs. Consistency checks are made to ensure that only one action is scheduled for a particular component on a given date and time. No checks are performed for scheduling conflicts.
When InterChange Server Express and components are geographically distant, there can be a slight delay. If you need to immediate change the state of a component, it is preferable to use System Monitor to start, stop, or pause a component rather than the scheduler.
To modify an existing schedule for a collaboration or a connector:
To edit Recurrence options, click the cursor anywhere on the scheduled item row; the recurrent values for that scheduled item display in the Recurrence pane if they have been assigned.
To delete an existing schedule for a collaboration object or a connector:
To display a schedule or a group of schedules:
To selectively disable or enable schedules: