TIBCO EBX®
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Task scheduler

Overview

TIBCO EBX® offers the ability to schedule programmatic tasks.

Note

In order to avoid conflicts and deadlocks, tasks are scheduled in a single queue.

Configuration from EBX®

The declaration of schedules and tasks is done by selecting 'Task scheduler' in the 'Administration' area.

Cron expression

(An extract of the Quartz Scheduler documentation)

The task scheduler uses "cron expressions", which can create firing schedules such as: "At 8:00am every Monday through Friday" or "At 1:30am every last Friday of the month".

Format

A cron expression is a string comprised of 6 or 7 fields separated by a white space. Fields can contain any of the allowed values, along with various combinations of the allowed special characters for that field. The fields are as follows:

Field Name

Mandatory

Allowed Values

Allowed Special Characters

Seconds

Yes

0-59

, - * /

Minutes

Yes

0-59

, - * /

Hours

Yes

0-23

, - * /

Day of month

Yes

0-31

, - * ? / L W

Month

Yes

1-12 or JAN-DEC

, - * /

Day of week

Yes

1-7 or SUN-SAT

, - * ? / L #

Year

No

empty, 1970-2099

, - * /

A cron expression can be as simple as this: "0 * * * * ?",

or more complex, like this: "0/5 14,18,3-39,52 * ? JAN,MAR,SEP MON-FRI 2002-2010".

Note

The legal characters and the names of months and days of the week are not case sensitive. MON is the same as mon.

Special characters

A cron expression is a string comprised of 6 or 7 fields separated by a white space. Fields can contain any of the allowed values, along with various combinations of the allowed special characters for that field. The fields are as follows:

Examples

Expression

Meaning

0 0 12 * * ?

Fire at 12pm (noon) every day.

0 15 10 ? * *

Fire at 10:15am every day.

0 15 10 * * ?

Fire at 10:15am every day.

0 15 10 * * ? *

Fire at 10:15am every day.

0 15 10 * * ? 2005

Fire at 10:15am every day during the year 2005.

0 * 14 * * ?

Fire every minute starting at 2pm and ending at 2:59pm, every day.

0 0/5 14 * * ?

Fire every 5 minutes starting at 2pm and ending at 2:55pm, every day.

0 0/5 14,18 * * ?

Fire every 5 minutes starting at 2pm and ending at 2:55pm, AND fire every 5 minutes starting at 6pm and ending at 6:55pm, every day.

0 0-5 14 * * ?

Fire every minute starting at 2pm and ending at 2:05pm, every day.

0 10,44 14 ? 3 WED

Fire at 2:10pm and at 2:44pm every Wednesday in the month of March.

0 15 10 ? * MON-FRI

Fire at 10:15am every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

0 15 10 15 * ?

Fire at 10:15am on the 15th day of every month.

0 15 10 L * ?

Fire at 10:15am on the last day of every month.

0 15 10 ? * 6L

Fire at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month.

0 15 10 ? * 6L 2002-2005

Fire at 10:15am on every last friday of every month during the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

0 15 10 ? * 6#3

Fire at 10:15am on the third Friday of every month.

0 0 12 1/5 * ?

Fire at 12pm (noon) every 5 days every month, starting on the first day of the month.

0 11 11 11 11 ?

Fire every November 11th at 11:11am.

Note

Pay attention to the effects of '?' and '*' in the day-of-week and day-of-month fields.

Support for specifying both a day-of-week and a day-of-month value is not complete (you must currently use the '?' character in one of these fields).

Be careful when setting fire times between the hours of the morning when "daylight savings" changes occur in your locale (for US locales, this would typically be the hour before and after 2:00 AM - because the time shift can cause a skip or a repeat depending on whether the time moves back or jumps forward.

Task definition

EBX® scheduler comes with some predefined tasks.

Custom scheduled tasks can be added by the means of scheduler Java API.

The declaration of schedules and tasks is done by selecting 'Task scheduler' in the 'Administration' area.

Task configuration

A user must be associated with a task definition; this user will be used to generate the session that will run the task.

Note

The user will not be authenticated, and no password is required. As a consequence, a user with no password set in the directory can only be used to run scheduled tasks.

A custom task can be parameterized by means of a JavaBean specification (getter and setter).

Supported parameter types are:

Parameter values are set in XML format.

Documentation > Administration Guide > Technical administration