2 year wait vs Batch Report
Alon Raskin
araskin at 3i-consulting.com
Mon May 9 08:49:31 EDT 2005
Hi Helena,
This is an excellent point. Definitely a down side to going with the deadline monitoring job.... But for this particular situation, I will probably stick with the deadline monitoring approach for various reasons.
Thank you everyone for your input. I am pleased that we had such a 'lively' debate on the topic.
Regards,
Alon Raskin
e: araskin at 3i-consulting.com <mailto:araskin at 3i-consulting.com>
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________________________________
From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu on behalf of Svanikier, Helena
Sent: Mon 5/9/2005 07:37
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: RE: 2 year wait vs Batch Report
Hi there
There is one reason which I haven't seen mentioned yet:
With the workflow approach you are assuming that the process behind and
within the workflow is staying quite stable. If you want to change the
workflow at any stage, you will have workflow instances following the
old pattern for the next two years. Which means, that you would have to
clear all running instances and create new workflows instances to
replace them.
By using the job, you would just need to unschedule the planned job.
Helena Svanikier
-----Original Message-----
From: sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu [mailto:sap-wug-bounces at mit.edu] On Behalf
Of Kjetil Kilhavn
Sent: Montag, 9.Mai 2005 08:48
To: SAP Workflow Users' Group
Subject: Re: 2 year wait vs Batch Report
This one generated quite the discussion, it's almost like a good old
Linux
vs. MS Windows, Notes vs. MS Outlook, or OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office
discussion. All three mentioned in order of preference (just so you know
it). Since there are already multiple threads I thought I may as well
continue the one I agree with.
The minimum amount of resources would in my opinion be consumed by using
a
requested start deadline as you suggest as your preferred solution.
There
are also some (possible) advantages to this such as being able to see
how
many active instances you have, (almost) no worries about upgrades etc.
Since this is a standard feature we must assume that SAP has made the
necessary optimizations to keep the deadline monitoring job performance
acceptable.
We have a workflow which notifies our HR people about people returning
from
long-term leave (maternity, paternity, unpaid leave and what have you),
and
those can sit silently waiting for a couple of years too. They don't do
any
harm, and the deadline job runs anyway.
The daily batch job will give one more job to administer. Perhaps you
would
need to store your waiting entries in a Z-table which means another
table
to maintain. If you *don't* have a Z-table you need a good index for
your
requirements in the standard table or you will risk either poor
performance
from the start or performance getting worse as time goes by (more and
more
entries in the table which is fully scanned every day).
Scheduling a batch job per workflow seems like the worst of all
solutions,
as pointed out by someone here because - as opposed to a workflow
waiting
for a deadline - manual handling is required if the system has been
taken
down and the jobs changed from released to scheduled status. And the
system
must in some way check whether it is time to run that job or not.
--
Kjetil Kilhavn
Peter Roehlen
<theycallmepete at yah To: sap-wug at mit.edu
oo.com.au> cc: (bcc: Kjetil
Kilhavn)
Sent by: Subject: Re: 2 year
wait vs Batch Report
sap-wug-bounces at mit
.edu
05.05.2005 14:27
Please respond to
"SAP Workflow
Users' Group"
Hi Alon,
Just thought I'd kick in my two cents :) Please excuse the double reply
to
this topic - I had the wrong subject in my previous post.
I've had a quick look at program RSWWDHEX (the Deadline monitoring job)
which I beleive is the relevant one for your proposed 2 year wait job.
It
seems to be very efficient and only reads table SWWWIDH using a date
(with
an index) to see which work items have reached their deadline. I can't
see
how you could write something that was much more efficient than this.
The only caveat I add to this is that the deadline monitoring job
typically
runs several times an hour as opposed the 'nightly batch job' you
referred
to. I wouldn't be too concerned about this unless the volume of waiting
workflows is huge.
Cheers
Peter Roehlen.
Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 07:55:48 -0400
From: "Alon Raskin" <araskin at 3i-consulting.com>
To: "SAP Workflow Users' Group" <sap-wug at mit.edu>
Subject: 2 year wait vs Batch Report
Hi Everyone,
I would love to hear peoples opinions on this issue.
We have a situation where a workflow has to do update a field and then
wait for 2 years before clearing that field. There are two
possibilities
to this issue.
1. Put in a 2 year wait step
2. Terminate the workflow and run a nightly batch job which would query
some table and determine if 2 years have passed and then reset the
field
accordingly.
Currently I am leaning towards option 1 as I really don't see a
difference
in option 1 and option 2. Ultimately they are all just batch jobs which
check dates and then do some processing. The volumes! here are very
low.
Your thoughts?
Alon Raskin
e: araskin at 3i-consulting.com
w: http://www.3i-consulting.com
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