Strategy to terminate database job from a remote program utilizing cron - java

I have not yet coded a potential solution to this, so before anyone asks I have zero code to back this up as I am trying to get a firm grip on the processing behind what needs to happen.
My problem is that I have an Oracle database that will be firing off jobs constantly (every 10 minutes or so) and I need a safe way (security wise and data integrity wise), to terminate these jobs and prevent them from executing while a nightly back up takes place. For the sake of discussion this will be done via a cron job. The way I think it should work is that the cron job will fire off at a time of 1 am (or some other low usage time, by low I mean < .001% of the user base will be interacting with the system). The java process will need to execute some PL/SQL function on the database that does the following things:
1) A force terminate on all running jobs
2) A snapshot of data that is to be written to an arbitrary directory
3) Restart all jobs (mark them as enabled instead of disabled)
My question is this:
How can this be accomplished with the minimum amount of permissions and does this loose architecture facilitate the ability to prevent data corruption, assuming Oracle is correctly generating undo/redo logs? IF this is an insecure/poor way of doing this, any other suggestions are appreciated.

In Oracle 10+ DBMS_Scheduler has a window definition that does exactly what you want. When the window ends, processing of running jobs can be terminated.
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E14072_01/appdev.112/e10577/d_sched.htm

Related

Batchlet vs EJB Timer

I did an application to do some testing on network nodes like ping test, retrieve disk space ans so on.
I use a scheduled batchlet to run the actions but I wonder if it is the rigth use of batchlet?
Does an EJB timer should be more relevant? Also, when I run a batchlet, my glassfish server keeps a log of the batch job and I don't necessary need it (especially with the amount of batch jobs genereted during a day).
If I need to run some job in the same schedule time, I think batchled can do it but EJB timer too?
Could you give me your input on the rigth way to achieve this?
Thanks,
Ersch
This isn't a question with a clear answer, but there is a bit of a cost in factoring your application as a batch job, and I would look at what I'm getting to see if it's worth doing so.
So you're thinking about a job consisting of a single Batchlet step. Well, there'd be nothing gained from "restart" functions, neither at the failing step within a job nor leveraging checkpoints within a chunk step. The batchlet programming model is quite simple... even if you really like #BatchProperty you'd have to deal with an XML now to do so.
This only starts to get more interesting if you want to start, view, and manage these executions along with the rest of your batch jobs. This might be because you're working with an implementation that offers some kind of implementation-specific add-on function. An example of this could be an integration with external scheduler software, allowing jobs to be scheduled by it. At the other extreme, if you found value in having a persisted record of all your batch job executions in one place (the job repository, usually a persistent DB), then that could also make this worthwhile for you.
But if you don't care for any of that, then an EJB timer could be the way to go instead.
Using an EJB timer is appropriate when your task executes in an eye blink (or thereabouts).
Otherwise use the batching mechanism.
Long running tasks executed from EJB timers can be problematical because they execute in transactions which normally time out after a short period of time. Increasing this transaction time out also increases the chances of database and perhaps other resource locks which can impact normal operation of your application.

Java/Database project automation

I have a Java/Database project in Netbeans that I would like to run once a day at a set time. I am using Derby for the database driver. I am trying to automate a process.
How can I 'schedule' this program to run at specified times?
How can I customize this to keep running until a certain criteria is met?
Say my criteria is that It has to populate 500 rows in the database. (So say at the scheduled time it runs it can only populate 400 rows, then maybe 2 hours later it tries running again to fill the last 100 rows)
Lastly, what are the best practices of automation and scheduled tasks?
How can I 'schedule' this program to run at specified times?
This can be done one of two ways, depending on your operating system - write a job that kicks off the java program at the intervals you need. You may then hook up the job to be started off on start up.
In Linux you can accomplish this with a cron job or so. On windows you may refer to this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308569.
You may also program the scheduler into your java program using http://quartz-scheduler.org or http://www.sauronsoftware.it/projects/cron4j/ .
How can I customize this to keep running until a certain criteria is met?
This is perhaps best established from within your program, although it is hard to give you directions without much info.
Lastly, what are the best practices of automation and scheduled tasks?
Depending on your application architecture, scheduling and automation can be handled either from within the app or get support from the operating system. The criteria depends on how much control the application needs, which platform makes scheduling easy etc.
Hope this helps.
Quartz is a scheduling project for Java. I have used it in many projects and find it to be very intuitive.
It may be a little over the top for what your after but worth a look anyway.
You can make use of Timer for scheduling the events & the events/task must be implemented using TimerTask

Java application subscribed to PostgreSQL/MySql

I need to create a Java agent that can be aware and execute its instruccions as soon as any update for particular tables in a Mysql or Psql Database occurr.
Everything needs to be done automaticaly.
I was wondering given Im a novice in Java you guys could give me any advice..
My options are:
1) Having a trigger that after a commit could awake my java application. (using Pg_notify and others)
2) or Having the java application subscribed to a particular ID in a database (not sure if this can be done given asynchronous updates are not possible and I might need to have my agent asking xx second to the dabatase for changes)
Thanks!
Yes, a trigger that uses NOTIFY is a good way to do it in PostgreSQL. The important problem when using the JDBC driver is that there is no way to receive notifications asynchronously, you have to poll. This is usually fine as the NOTIFY/LISTEN mechanism is very light-weight: if you want to poll 10 (100?) times a second, then you can do so without causing performance problems. See http://jdbc.postgresql.org/documentation/83/listennotify.html for more.
MySQL is a little less helpful; you'll need to have triggers INSERT rows into a monitoring table and repeatedly poll that table with SELECT * (and then DELETE). This will work, but you are more likely to end up in a latency/performance trade-off.

Backend process VS scheduled task

I have a number of backend processes (java applications) which run 24/7. To monitor these backends (i.e. to check if a process is not responding and notify via SMS/EMAIL) I have written another application.
The old backends now log heartbeat at regular time interval and this new applications checks if they are doing it regularly and notifies if necessary.
Now, We have two options
either run it as a scheduled task, which will run after every (let say) 15 min and stop after doing its job or
Run it as another backend process with 15 min sleep time.
The issue we can foresee right now is that what if this monitor application goes into non-responding state? So, my question is Is there any difference between both the cases or both are same? What option would suit my case more?
Please note this is a specific case and is not same as this or this
Environment: Java, hosted on LINUX server
By scheduled task, do you mean triggered by the system scheduler, or as a scheduled thread in the existing backend processes?
To capture unexpected termination or unresponsive states you would be best running a separate process rather than a thread. However, a scheduled thread would give you closer interaction with the owning process with less IPC overhead.
I would implement both. Maintain a record of the local state in each backend process, with a scheduled task in each process triggering a thread to update the current state of that node. This update could be fairly frequent, since it will be less expensive than communicating with a separate process.
Use your separate "monitoring app" process to routinely gather the information about all the backend processes. This should occur less frequently - whether the process is running all the time, or scheduled by a cron job is immaterial since the state is held in each backend process. If one of the backends become unresponsive, this monitoring app will be able to determine the lack of response and perform some meaningful probes to determine what the problem is. It will be this component that will then notify your SMS/Email utility to send a report.
I would go for a backend process as it can maintain state
have a look at the quartz scheduler from terracotta
http://terracotta.org/products/quartz-scheduler
It will be resilient to transient conditions and you only need provide a simple wrap so the monitor app should be robust providing you get the threading stuff right in the quartz.properties file.
You can use nagios core as core and Naptor to monitoring your application. Its easy to setup and embed with your application development.
You can check at this link:
https://github.com/agunghakase/Naptor/tree/ver1.0.0

Preventing multiple users from doing the same action

I have a swing desktop application that is installed on many desktops within a LAN. I have a mysql database that all of them talk to. At precisely 5 PM everyday, there is a thread that will wake up in each of these applications and try to back up files to a remote server. I would like to prevent all the desktop applications from doing the same thing.
The way I was thinking to do this was:
After waking up at 5PM , all the applications will try to write a row onto a MYSQL table. They will write the same information. Only 1 will succeed and the others will get a duplicate row exception. Whoever succeeds, then goes on to run the backup program.
My questions are:
Is this right way of doing things? Is there any better (easier) way?
I know we can do this using sockets as well. But I dont want to go down that route... too much of coding also I would need to ensure that all the systems can talk to each other first (ping)
Will mysql support such as a feature. My DB is INNO DB. So I am thinking it does. Typically I will have about 20-30 users in the LAN. Will this cause a huge overhead for the DB to handle.
If you could put an intermediate class in between the applications and the database that would queue up the results and allow them to proceed in an orderly manner you'd have it knocked.
It sounds like the applications all go directly against the database. You'll have to modify the applications to avoid this issue.
I have a lot of questions about the design:
Why are they all writing "the same row"? Aren't they writing information for their own individual instance?
Why would every one of them have exactly the same primary key? If there was an auto increment or timestamp you would't have this problem.
What's the isolation set to on the database connection? If it's set to SERIALIZABLE, you'll force each one to wait until the previous one is done, at the cost of performance.
Could you have them all write files to a common directory and pick them up later in an orderly way?
I'm just brainstorming now.
It seems you want to backup server data not client data.
I recommend to use a 3-tier architecture using Java EE.
You could use a Timer Service then to trigger the backup.
Though usually a backup program is an independent program e.g. started by a cron job on the server. But again: you'll need a server to do this properly, not just a shared folder.
Here is what I would suggest. Instead of having all clients wake up at the same time and trying to perform the backup, stagger the time at which they wake up.
So when a client wakes up
- It will check some table in your DB (MYSQL) to see if a back up job has completed or is running currently. If the job has completed, the client will go on with its normal duties. You can decide how to handle the case when the job is running.
- If the client finds that the back up job has not been run for the day, it will start the back up job. At the same time will modify the row to indicate that the back up job has started. Once the back up has completed the client will modify the table to indicate that the back up has completed.
This approach will prevent a spurt in network activity and can also provide a rudimentary form of failover. So if one client fails, another client at a later time can attempt the backup. (this is a bit more involved though. Basically it comes down to what a client should do when it sees that a back up job is on going).

Categories

Resources