J2EE Scheduler

Schedule-based execution in a J2EE Web Application

 

Schedule-based execution in a J2EE Web Application.

 

Scheduled tasks fall into two categories:

• System level task, such as system backup. Usually, it is done by system administrators or operators at data center.
• Application level, such as business report. Usually, this is the responsibilities of business units.

Usually, your application server is in your data center or at a hosting company. You want to control application tasks at your office on a client machine. Different departments want to manage their own tasks. For example, warehouses run inventory checking tasks while sales run sale analysis tasks. If anything goes wrong at the system level (for example database is down), the scheduler should send alert notifications to the administrator on duty. If you run scheduled business patrol tasks and find an abnormal condition at business level, the scheduler should send alarm notifications to the people in charge. All notifications should be handled by the scheduler automatically.

All the above issues require scheduler to support distributed computing environment with the following features:

• The scheduler can run on any machine in the network at any time.
• The scheduler can be run from data center and offices simultaneously.
• The scheduled task should run once and only once at the scheduled time, regardless of how many of the schedulers are running.
• Missed tasks can be detected and alerted.