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Submitting a Process or Chain

When you request a process definition to be executed, the scheduler schedules the process for execution. A request for execution is also called "submitting". Before the execution request is passed on to the scheduler, you may:

  • Change scheduling behavior parameter values.
  • Enter or change parameter values.

Once a request has been submitted, the process can be created. By default, a scheduled process is executed according to the start date and time, and provided a process server is up and running. Processes can also be scheduled directly on hold, this process requires human intervention before it starts.

When the submit wizard opens and a process definition has been selected, it evaluates and validates the parameter values. When you have a great number of parameters or complex evaluation and/or validation routines, parameter values may not yet be editable until this process has completed.

note

When you pre-submit more than 100 processes, you will get a warning.

note

You cannot pre-submit more than 5000 processes, as this can have serious consequences in terms of performance.

To submit a process with a schedule, to repeat periodically, you can use the built-in frequencies, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. If you want the process to repeat multiple times a day, for example every two hours, you must first create a submit frame.

Owner

The process is owned by the user who submitted it. If the process has a recurrence, the process group will be owned by the initial submitter. When a user restarts or resubmits a process definition owned by another user, the owner changes to the user who restarted or resubmitted the process definition. You use the System_ChangeOwner process definition to switch owners of process definitions and process groups.

Best Practices

It is advised to use technical users to submit processes with a recurrence to avoid potential problems in the future due to changes in personnel. Ideally, technical users should not be allowed to log on to the Redwood Server. When normal users leave a team responsible for working with Redwood's product (or leave the company), their privileges are usually changed or revoked. If the user logs on to the Redwood Server after their privileges have changed, their accounts may potentially no longer be able to submit processes. The impact of the loss of privileges would be process groups with a recurrence owned by the user will no longer be able to be submitted since the user now has inadequate privileges. If a team member that owns processes with recurrences leaves the team, to prevent potential problems with recurrences, disable the user on to the Redwood Server. To do this navigate to Security>Users and choose Deactivating login for the user.

You use the System_ChangeOwner process definition to change owners.

Procedure

There are several ways you can submit a job:

  1. Choose the Submit button,.
  2. On the tool-bar to submit any process definition. A selection screen appears where the process definition that is to be submitted must be selected.
  3. In the lower detail pane of "Definitions > Chains" or "Definitions > Processes" to submit the selected process definition or chain definition.
  4. From the context-menu of a process, process definition or chain definition.
  5. Choose the Submit button to submit the process immediately.
  6. Choose the navigation links, if parameters or the scheduling behavior are to be changed.
note

Built-in SAPR3 process definitions cannot be submitted directly, as they do not have a default queue. The queue of built-in SAPR3 process definitions defines the SAP System where the process must run, therefore the queue is only set by default when there is only one SAP System defined.

Submit a process every 5 minutes

  1. Navigate to "Environment > Submit Frames".
  2. Locate a submit frame that opens every 5 minutes, if there is none, you will have to create one.
  3. Choose New submit frame from the context-menu.
  4. Fill a name into the Name field, Redwood recommends that in this case you use the name Every5Minutes.
  5. On the Elements tab, choose Interval, fill 5 into the Submit every field and select Minutes.
  6. Choose Save & Close.
  7. Navigate to "Definitions > Processes" and choose Submit from the context-menu of the process definition you want to schedule.
  8. Fill in any parameters, if required, and choose Next.
  9. On the Times and Dates page, select Submit frame and fill in the name of the submit frame, in this case Every5Minutes.
  10. Choose Submit, you may have to select a queue and choose Submit again, depending on the process definition you selected.

Parameters

When the process definition has no parameters, the Parameters navigation link is disabled and appears greyed out.

  • If the parameters are assigned to groups, the group names are shown on the tabs, located at the top of the window.
  • If the parameters have default values, they are set initially.
  • Enter the values for the parameters or choose them from the drop-down lists.
  • Alternatively, you may use the Default or Last used values as follows:
    • Last used values - Sets the parameter value to the values of the last process of this process definition that you submitted.
    • Default values - Sets the parameter value to the default expression value of the corresponding process definition parameter. If there is no default expression filled out, the parameter will be cleared.

Times and Dates

Processes are submitted with a start time calculated relative to the session time zone. The time zone you choose at submit-time will become the time zone.

To schedule the process, select the date, time and time zone, by default this is the time the process is created in the database and displayed as Now. A Calendar is available to choose a date.

note

The date you enter is treated in a lenient fashion, that is 32/12/2011 is treated as 01/01/2012.

In order to schedule multiple executions of a process definition, there are several options:

  • Once (default)
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • Yearly
  • Dates
  • submit frame

Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly

  • Select the interval.

Select the range.

  • Recurrence Presubmit Count - The number of processes to create in advance
  • Recurrence Max Processes - the maximum number of processes in a recurrence
  • Recurrence End Date - the end date of a recurrence, none means the process is rescheduled endlessly.

The default value for the pre-submit count in the submit wizard is set to 1 when you use a submit frame. The default value is 10 when no submit frames are used and can be overridden by the registry entry/configuration/jcs/recurrence/DefaultPreSubmit. At every system startup, an operator message is created if this key does not exist or is invalid.

Select the scope

  • Scope - first, second, third, fourth or last
  • Day, Week, Month
  • Interval (of every)
    • Skip a number of months

Dates

Choose Dates if specific dates are to be used for when the process is submitted.

Submit Frame

Choose Advanced if predefined time window and submit frame are to be used for the process.

With a submit frame, you can configure the recurrence:

  • Recurrence Presubmit Count - The number of processes to be submitted in advance
  • Recurrence Max Processes - The maximum amount of processes that are allowed to be in the recurrence, older processes are deleted.
  • Recurrence End Date - The end date of the recurrence; when this date is reached, no new processes will be submitted.

Control

The following Fields are available:

  • Process Options
    • Queue - The queue in which the process is executed.
    • Priority - A process can be assigned a particular priority between 0 and 100, where 0 is the minimum priority and 100 the maximum priority. When system load becomes too high, the process server can postpone low-priority processes and continue executing high-priority processes.
    • Hold On Submit - To submit the process on status Hold; note that manual intervention is necessary to start the process.
    • Start at Step - Available for Chain, allows you to skip one or more steps of the chain
  • Advanced Options
    • Out Log - verbosity-level for the stdout file (stdout.log)
    • Error Log - verbosity-level for the stderr file (stderr.log)
    • Process Server - for process to run on the specified process server.

Submit

The following steps are available after submitting the job:

  • I am done - The process is submitted and the window is closed.
  • Show all processes - The process is submitted, the window is closed and the processes monitor is shown. Choose Last to see the process in the overview.
  • Submit another process - The process is submitted, the window remains open, and another process definition can be selected again.

See Also

← Submitting Processes and ChainsScheduling with Times and Dates →