2 year wait vs Batch Report

Mon May 9 02:47:51 EDT 2005

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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