[Clockwork-developers] Architecture of job scheduler

[Joel L. <jo...@lo...>]

In the limited research I did looking at features of commercial job
schedulers, I found an interesting idea. I had always taken for granted
that any distributed job scheduler would need to have a central server
process to manage the schedule and distribute the work of the schedule to
other systems. But Orsyp's scheduler (called "Dollar Universe") has no
central server -- although the schedule is still managed centrally.

I don't know exactly how this works, since I've never used their scheduler,
but it's interesting. What's also interesting is that on their web site, they
mention this only to say that if a system is isolated from the network,
it will still run its jobs. I don't know about you, but if one of my systems
was isolated from the network, I think I would prefer that it not attempt
to run any jobs, since they most likely wouldn't work.

At work, TCS really likes Orsyp's scheduler, particularly because there's no
central server and no databases to manage. There's a lot less overhead for
the scheduler than with AutoSys, or at least it seems.

Does anyone have an opinion about this kind of design? Like I said, until
I saw Dollar Universe, I had just assumed there would have to be a central
event processor (to borrow a term from AutoSys). And a SQL-based database
would make things easier to work with from a development perspective, but
not until now did I realize that it might make the system less attractive
for a user, since they would have to manage another database.

If you want to see the list of features in Orsyp's Dollar Universe, see:
	http://www.orsyp.com/us/dollar_universe.asp

-- 
Joel