Terracotta/Quartz Integration Offers an In-Memory Cluster Based Distributed Job Scheduling

Posted by Srini Penchikala on Dec 13, 2009

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Terracotta

Terracotta and Quartz integration product offers an in-memory cluster based distributed job scheduling and workload management for enterprise Java applications. Terracotta recently announced the acquisition of the open source job-scheduling software and a new product integration. The new product gives the developers a cluster node-aware scheduling feature as an alternative to the traditional solution of using a central database for coordination of jobs and to manage distributed workloads.

A new build and test infrastructure of Quartz has been implemented leveraging Maven and Hudson continuous integration tools. The conversion involves restructuring the source code and non-code resources into the Maven conventional directory structure and separating some portions of the code into separate Maven modules to allow for conditional builds of modules.

An updated express version of clustered Quartz is also available. This product, called Terracotta Quartz EX, is a new Terracotta Job Store for Quartz and provides a way to schedule the jobs across multiple nodes for Quartz users who are currently running their applications without the clustering enabled. For Quartz users who are currently clustering using a relational database as the central job store (for example using the Oracle Job Store), this new job store provides a way to implement the clustering solution without the overhead of the relational database. The beta package of the product contains the latest version of Quartz (1.7.0) and an express install of the new Terracotta job store for Quartz.

Switching from un-clustered Quartz to the clustered version can be done by adding the new Terracotta job store JAR file to the application classpath and changing the configuration to point to a running instance of the Terracotta Server Array. From that point forward, all jobs will have persistence and HA. The implementation relies on Terracotta's lock manager and HA platform and requires no database.

Quartz will remain as an open source product under the Apache 2 license. Regarding the upcoming features and the future road map in Terracotta and Quartz products, there will be some enhancements in the Quartz framework in management and operational areas. Quartz will provide the job management service, that is not dependent on the database for reliability, where the developers can schedule, visualize, pause, restart, and cancel jobs. There will also be further integration of Quartz into the full suite of Terracotta solutions.

 

Srini Penchikala currently works as Security Architect and has 17 yrs of experience in software product management.

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