Jobs

A job is a WebSphere Commerce command that is scheduled to run on behalf of a site or store at a specified time or interval. The three types of jobs are: regular jobs, store level jobs, and broadcast jobs.

Regular jobs

Commands that are designed to run automatically at a specified start time. They do not check a business logic task command before they run. Only Site Administrators can schedule this type of job. When a regular job is scheduled, a new entry in the SCHACTIVE table is created with a state of I. When the job is run, a new entry in the SCHSTATUS table is created. The new entry contains the state and status information about the execution of the scheduled job. Examples of regular jobs include: SendMarketingTriggers, and SendTransactedMsg.

Store level jobs

Similar to regular jobs, but they contain a task command that checks the business logic to determine whether the job needs to be run. This filtering process allows the scheduler to run only necessary jobs, minimizing its workload. When a store level job is scheduled, a new entry in the SCHACTIVE table is created with a state of W. Store level jobs are associated with a particular store and can be scheduled by Site Administrators. When the job is run, a new entry in the SCHSTATUS table is created. The new entry contains the state and status information about the execution of the scheduled job. Examples of store level jobs include: order jobs such as ProcessBackorders, and OrderClose.

Broadcast jobs

Apply all clones to run them immediately, or as soon as the scheduler can arrange. They run one time on all clones or Transaction Servers that are connected to the same database. A broadcast job start time is always the current time. They expire after a time period specified in the configuration file. The default expiry time period is 30 minutes. Broadcast job status is logged in the SCHBRDCST database table and displayed in the Scheduler Status Display page. Examples of broadcast jobs include: RefreshLocalRegistry, and SaveMarketingStatistics.

Each job runs as a separate thread, and multiple jobs can be scheduled to run simultaneously. A fixed number of threads are assigned to each application group. To avoid overloading the default application pool, the Schedule Job window allows for application partitioning. The application type is entered into the SCHCONFIG table with the number of threads assigned to run the job.

The Schedule Job window can also be used to specify the start time for a job. Job tracking information, including start time, end time, and status is maintained in the SCHSTATUS table and displayed on the Scheduler Status Display page.

Note: A warning is printed to the SystemOut.log if a thread runs long. For example,

ThreadMonitor W   WSVR0605W: Thread "WorkManager.default : 12" (00000029) has been active for 764118 milliseconds and may be hung.  
There is/are 1 thread(s) in total in the server that may be hung.

If a thread is active for more than 30 minutes, WebSphere Commerce considers it hung. We can ignore these warnings if some scheduler jobs are running on these threads and are expected to run for more than 30 minutes. If necessary, configure WebSphere Application Server's hang detection policy to more appropriate values.

When jobs that are not expected to run for more than 30 minutes, but the warning statement still appears in the SystemOut.log file, further investigation might be required. Typically, the trace specification, com.ibm.websphere.commerce.WC_SERVER=all, can be used to determine what job was run on this thread ID, for example, 00000029.

The following table shows the jobs that are scheduled to run on the scheduler by default.

Default scheduler jobs

Job	Description	For more information
ActivityCleanUp	Cleans up the activities data stored in the CTXMGMT and CTXDATA tables.	ActivityCleanUp URL
CleanECEvent	Deletes up to the specified maximum number of business events from the BUSEVENT database table. These business events are either in purge state or older than the specified expiration time (by default, 30 minutes). Database records for the business events are deleted and committed in batches of 5000. The default maximum number of business events is 500, 000. By default, this scheduled job runs every 30 minutes.	Scheduling the CleanECEvent job
DynaCacheInvalidation	Invalidates entries in the WebSphere Application Server dynamic cache.	DynaCacheInvalidation URL
EvaluateRuleBasedCategories	Reapplies the rules for rule-based sales categories on a configured time interval.	Creating the rule-based sales category evaluation scheduled job
EventProcessor	Processes events in the -10 state. Analytics events are sent to an external analytics system and then updated to the -20 state and non-analytics events are updated to the -20 state. By default, this scheduled job runs every hour.	Scheduling the EventProcessor job
RaiseECEvent	Processes pending base ECEvents. See	RaiseECEvent URL
RefreshLocalRegistry	Refreshes the local registry.
SaveMarketingStatistics	Saves accumulated statistics to the database.	Scheduling the SaveMarketingStatistics job
SchedCoupon	Processes current coupons to check for expiration.	SchedCoupon URL
SendMarketingTriggers	Schedules the sending of marketing email activities. This job also processes triggers in dialog activities and generates top-browsed and best-seller lists in web activities.	Scheduling the SendMarketingTriggers job
SendTransactedMsg	Sends all outstanding messages using the Send Transacted Sending services.	SendTransactedMsg URL
TicklerUnlockMonitor	Unlocks ticklers that are locked for more than a specified time.	TicklerUnlockMonitor URL
UpdateSearchIndex	Synchronizes quick publish catalog changes with the search index in production.	Creating and scheduling the UpdateSearchIndex job

• Scheduling a site-level job
  Use the Administration Console to schedule a job on the site level.

• Maintaining the scheduler
  The SCHSTATUS table contains one entry for every execution of a job in the SCHCONFIG table. Because of the large number of jobs that are run by the scheduler, there are many job status records in the SCHSTATUS table. This size can have an adverse affect on the performance of the Transaction Server. Periodically clean up the SCHSTATUS table.

• Scheduler configuration parameters
  We can change scheduler parameters to control behavior. We can control behaviors such as expiry time, waiting time between checks for jobs, and the number of threads to allocate to an application type.

• Scheduling marketing jobs
  If the store uses the services-based marketing system, the following scheduled jobs are added. We can adjust the schedule on which these jobs run if necessary.

Related concepts
Scheduler configuration parameters

Related tasks
Scheduling a site-level job
Maintaining the scheduler
Scheduling marketing jobs

Related reference
Scheduled job states