WCS Schedulers

Introduction

Regular Scheduler Jobs: Any long running offline process can be run as a WCS scheduler job, think about them as regular WCS commands which gets triggered by WCS scheduler engine and performs a specific task based on your custom implementation, the jobs could be one time only or can be executed at a regular frequency.

Broadcast jobs: These are WCS jobs which run on every single WCS JVM in the cluster at least once,  Refresh Registry is one such job, this Job ensures registry which resides in WCS JVM on every instance is refreshed.

All WCS jobs require WCS runtime for there execution, which means they can not be run outside of WCS server or container.

In terms of datamodel, there are few key tables you need to be aware of
SCHCONFIG
SCHSTATUS
SCHACTIVE
SCHBRDCST

Creating a custom Scheduler Job

package com.ibm.commerce.samples;
import com.ibm.commerce.command.ControllerCommand;
public interface MyCustomSchedulerCmd extends ControllerCommand {

public static final String defaultCommandClassName="com.ibm.commerce.samples.MyCustomSchedulerCmdImpl";

}

//Define the custom scheduler implementation class
package com.ibm.commerce.samples;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import com.ibm.commerce.command.ControllerCommandImpl;
import com.ibm.commerce.exception.ECException;

public class MyCustomSchedulerCmdImpl extends ControllerCommandImpl implements
        MyCustomSchedulerCmd {
  
    Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(MyCustomSchedulerCmdImpl.class.getName());

    public void performExecute() throws ECException {
        //implement custom logic
        logger.info("Hello World from custom scheduler");
    }
}

//Make following Struts Config entry

<action parameter="com.ibm.commerce.samples.MyCustomSchedulerCmd" path="/MyCustomScheduler" type="com.ibm.commerce.struts.BaseAction">
<set-property property="authenticate" value="0:0"/>
<set-property property="https" value="0:1"/>
</action>

//Make following DB entries to register the new JOB.

-- Use following queries for Apache Derby DB
insert into schconfig (sccjobrefnum,scchost,member_id,storeent_id,sccrecdelay,sccrecatt,sccpathinfo,sccquery, sccstart,sccinterval,sccpriority,sccsequence,sccactive,sccapptype,interfacename,optcounter)
values
((select Max(sccjobrefnum)+1 FROM schconfig),null, -1000,10051, 100,0,'MyCustomScheduler',null, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 100, 5,0,'A',default,'com.ibm.commerce.samples.MyCustomSchedulerCmd',0);

insert into schactive (scsinstrefnum,scsjobnbr,scsactlstart,scsattleft,scsend, scsinstrecov,scsprefstart,scsqueue,scsresult,scssequence,scsstate,scspriority,optcounter)
 values
 ((select Max(scsinstrefnum)+1 FROM schactive),(select max(sccjobrefnum) FROM schconfig), CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,1,null,null,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,null,null,0,'I',default,0);

-- Oracle DB
insert into schconfig (sccjobrefnum,scchost,member_id,storeent_id,sccrecdelay,sccrecatt,sccpathinfo,sccquery, sccstart,sccinterval,sccpriority,sccsequence,sccactive,sccapptype,interfacename,optcounter)
 values
((select Max(sccjobrefnum)+1 FROM schconfig),null, -1000,10051, 100,0,'MyCustomScheduler',null, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 100, 5,0,'A',default,'com.ibm.commerce.samples.MyCustomSchedulerCmd',0);

insert into schactive (scsinstrefnum,scsjobnbr,scsactlstart,scsattleft,scsend, scsinstrecov,scsprefstart,scsqueue,scsresult,scssequence,scsstate,scspriority,optcounter)
 values
 ((select Max(scsinstrefnum)+1 FROM schactive),(select max(sccjobrefnum) FROM schconfig), SYSDATE,1,null,null,CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,null,null,0,'I',default,0);

Sticky configuration for Scheduler jobs

A regular scheduler job by default may run randomly on any WCS instance in a cluster, you should use following configuration for sticky configuration of a Scheduler, this will allow it to run always from a given WCS instance in a cluster.

a. Define a JVM Property on the instance which will run the Scheduler Job
"com.ibm.commerce.scheduer.SchedulerHostName" and provide an identifier for the JVM that should run the job.

Refer following link for more details.
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/topic/com.ibm.commerce.admin.doc/tasks/tjsinstschjob.htm


b. While creating the Job replace the value for SCHCONFIG.SCCHOST with the value of the property, in this case as "mySchedulerJVM"

E.g. note that scchost has been replaced with 'mySchedulerJVM'


insert into schconfig (sccjobrefnum,scchost,member_id,storeent_id,sccrecdelay,sccrecatt,sccpathinfo,sccquery, sccstart,sccinterval,sccpriority,sccsequence,sccactive,sccapptype,interfacename,optcounter)
values
((select Max(sccjobrefnum)+1 FROM schconfig),'mySchedulerJVM', -1000,10051, 100,0,'MyCustomScheduler',null, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, 100, 5,0,'A',default,'com.ibm.commerce.samples.MyCustomSchedulerCmd',0);



Monitoring and Maintaining Scheduler Jobs

WCS provides WAS Admin console from which you can validate the Job status, this tool essentially lists down every single job status from SCHSTATUS table and is not a very user friendly tool, for some reason the pagination and sorting feature does not work very well.
as an alternative option you can query OOB tables with your job name and validate the status of the job.

More Reading

Maintaining Scheduler
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wchelp/v7r0m0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.commerce.admin.doc/tasks/tjsmaint.htm

Websphere Commerce Scheduler Mustgather
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21454411

Use following trace component for troubleshooting and scheduler related issues.
*=info: enable.trace.log.*=all: com.ibm.websphere.commerce.WC_THREAD=all: com.ibm.websphere.commerce.WC_SERVER=all

Maintaining the WebSphere Commerce Scheduler tables
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21397348