Re: Does PostgreSQL support job?

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : pgsql-sql-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:pgsql-sql-
> owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] De la part de Alvaro Herrera
> Envoyé : mercredi 1 février 2006 19:28
> À : Daniel Caune
> Cc : Owen Jacobson; pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Objet : Re: [SQL] Does PostgreSQL support job?
>
> Daniel Caune wrote:
>
> > Yes, that's it. A job is a task, i.e. set of statements, which is
> > scheduled to run against a RDBMS at periodical times. Some RDBMS,
> > such as SQL Server
>
> ..., the current alpha MySQL, ...
>
> > and Oracle, support that feature, even if such a
> > feature is managed differently from a RDBMS to another.
>
>
> I was amused when I read the MySQL news in LWN.net, because most
> comments were things like "what the hell has this half-baked feature has
> to do in a RDBMS anyway".
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/167895/
>

It's true that implementing a job management within an RDBMS is somewhat reinventing the wheel, especially on UNIX systems where cron exists (even on Windows, which supports scheduled tasks). Anyway, job support within a RDBMS sounds more like a facility.

"While I have built a number of large and small applications with various time-based event scheduling tables stored in an SQL database, including things like triggers that send asynchronous notifications to daemon clients to advise them to re-query for updated schedules, it never in my wildest imaginings occured to me to actually initiate execution autonomously from the database back end."
[zblaxell, 2006-01-25, http://lwn.net/Articles/167895/]

Well, perhaps zblaxell has only worked on operational systems (OLTP), but such autonomy is sometimes useful in low-cost business intelligence systems (OLAP).

--
Daniel CAUNE