Process Types

The Process Type screen displays an overview of all the process types that have been defined within the Process Framework. Each type of operation that needs to plug into the framework needs to be defined as a ‘Process Type’.

A Process Type has the following properties:

Name (Required) - Each process type must have a unique name.
Limit (Optional) - The process limit can be set if you want to restrict the number of processes of the given type that are running or scheduled to run at any one time.
Code to Execute (Required) - Enter the code to be executed when this process is submitted. This cannot be updated if the process is protected.
Protected (Read-only) - Processes that are shipped as standard will be flagged as protected, certain attributes may not be updated for a protected process.
Description (Required) - The description of the selected process allowing some context information to be specified if required. This cannot be updated if the process is protected.
Initiate from ‘Process Submission’ Module? (Optional - Checkbox) - If checked, the process type will appear in the list of processes that can be submitted in Submit a Process. This cannot be updated if the process is protected.
Automatic Restart After Database Down? (Optional - Checkbox) - If checked, it indicates to the scheduling engine that a processes of this type can re-start from the beginning following a database re-start. If unticked, processes of this type will be left as ‘Disabled’ following a re-start. This cannot be updated if the process is protected.

Automatic Restart should be defaulted to be unchecked. This is to avoid restartable processes spawning multiple processes at once when a database is re-started, potentially causing a database crash. This will mean that if a run process is stopped by the database going down for example then these run will not be restarted when the database is restarted. Subsequent scheduled runs for this process will not be affected.

Note: So for example, by default, if an inbuilt process was set to run on the hour every hour and it lasted 20 minutes then if the database went down at 12:10 and was back up at 12:30 the failed 12:00 run will not attempt to rerun but would instead be run at the next scheduled time of 1:00.

Click a Process Type in the page’s top table to highlight the row and to expose Process Type Values in tabs at the bottom of the page.

Roles Tab

The Roles tab contains a grid that lists the User roles that will have access to monitor or submit processes of the selected type. Note that Unrestricted users can submit/monitor processes of any type.

Frequencies Tab

On the Frequencies tab you can define the allowable repeat intervals for a process of the given type. When a process is submitted manually using Submit Process one frequency from this list can be selected.

If the process type supports polling, then the frequencies relate to the list of possible polling frequencies rather than the list of process frequencies

You can define the Display Sequence for each frequency. Frequencies are defined using the Scheduling Frequencies form.

Process Locations Tab

The Process Locations tab is used to specify a location for the system to run the appropriate process once a file has been selected via the file picker manually or picked up from the appropriate ftp site.

The files that are copied to this location for processing will remain there unless the actual process removes the files after processing. If the process does not remove the files they will have to be removed manually periodically.

Process Locations have the following properties:

File Type - Description of the file type to be processed.
Input Data Store - This can be either a Database Server or an Oracle Directory.
Input File Location - The file location. Depending on the Input Data Store value this can either be a file location or an Oracle Directory.
Output Data Store - This can be either a Database Server or an Oracle Directory.
Output File Location - The file location. Depending on the Input Data Store value this can either be a file location or an Oracle Directory.