Corn Job vs MultiThreading

[Gavi Raaghav]

I have a scenario where a scheduler, invoked by a cron job, would pick up list of timings at which a file processor should run.
The scheduler should invoke the file processor at different timings as picked from the database.
The file processor can either be cron jobs or it can be threads.
Each file processor will work on independent files and they would update independently.
The business scenario is such that you will not have any conditions of deadlock on any resource.

What is better to use Corn or Multithreading?

[Michael Ernest]

I see no substantive benefit to using threads in this case.

Nor any advanced Java stuff, either...moving to the Unix forum.
[ July 20, 2005: Message edited by: Michael Ernest ]

[Stefan Wagner]

How often do the time-definitions in the database change (update, remove, insert)?
Do you like to do this in a 2-step scheduling:

 
daily                    jobs
------------------- -->  -----------
00:01 get job-times      11:01 job 1
                         11:03 job 2
                         13:01 job 1
                         13:03 job 3
                         ...
00:01 get job-times      11:01 job 1
                         (11:03 job 2 deleted) 
                         13:01 job 1
                         13:04 job 4 (inserted)
                         13:05 job 3 (updated)
                         ...

I never created cron-jobs programmatically, but I don't see a problem in creating them from a database.

If jobs get defined typically shortly (few minutes) before the defined time, and have to be executed the same day, I would have a look at the 'at' command.

at now +17 minutes ... 

[Tim Holloway]

Or, if you're doing one-shot delayed jobs, use the "at" command.