Release 3.00
Sep 24, 2005
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Sybernet / Supplied Procedures Reference
Release 3.00 Sep 24, 2005 |
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The Sybercron Register allows you to schedule the automatic execution of your stored procedures. Your procedures can be executed once or they can be executed every Friday at 8PM. The output of your stored procedure can be e-mailed or written to a unix disk file.
Sybercron is a unix daemon that looks in your database for things to do. For each request found, a new process is spawned that executes that procedure with the attributes you specified. This could be its parameters, content-type, or disposition. Although this analogy never works, you can think of Sybercron as just another user of Sybernet. It is safe to kill any process invoked by Sybercron for the same reason it is safe to kill any process invoked by a user.
The Sybercron register allows you to create and edit aliases (also called groups). To create or edit an alias simply click the label next to the E-mail address, CC, or BCC under Sybernet Parameters. To edit an alias that already exists you can also click the Groups button. When an alias is specifed, Sybercron will either send one invocation of this procedure to that group, or it will invoke this procedure once for each E-mail address when the Recurse option under Subscription Information is specified.
If you send this output to an alias and the Recurse option is unchecked, Sybercron prepends this list with its groupname making it obvious who is in this group. If you want to send this output without having anyone know who else is included in this list, BCC them and use an empty group name in the E-mail address. This can be accomplished with someting like undisclosed recepients:;
This section describes general information about your Sybercron job.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Title |
This is the title or subject of your Sybercron job. The Sybercron register will automatically fill this in with its description if it is a Sybernet registered procedure. If it is not registered, it will default to its fully qualified procedure name. This is the name that appears as the title in the Sybercron Monitor, and if the output is being mailed to someone, the subject of this message. |
Description |
This field allows you to enter a description of what this procedure does. Nothing in Sybernet or Sybercron refer to this field so you can use it for anything you wish. |
Recurse |
Run this procedure once for each E-mail address. |
This section determines how Sybercron is suppose to invoke your stored procedure and what it is suppose do with its results.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
E-mail address |
A comma separated list of e-mail addresses. E-mail address or Scriptname are required. Specifying an E-mail address means you want to email the results of this procedure to someone. Specifying a scriptname means you want the results of this stored procedure written to a unix disk file. |
From |
The e-mail address that sent this report. This is required even if this procedure is not creating an e-mail. If you job fails, Sybercron will send an e-mail to this address notifying you that the procedure failed and why it failed. |
Scriptname |
If specified, this is the name of the output file created by your application. Make sure Sybercron has write access to this file if it resides outside of the Sybernet environment. |
CC |
CC this e-mail to this comma separated list of e-mail addresses. |
BCC |
BCC this e-mail to this comma separated list of e-mail addresses. |
Priority |
The priority of this e-mail. |
Platform |
Platform determines which copy of Sybercron is suppose to run this application. For any Sybase server or Oracle instance you may have several copies of Sybercron running from more than one host. When you invoke Sybercron from that host you tell it the platform it is running from. It is that platform that Sybercron looks for in the cron register. |
Format |
Format determines the output format that Sybercron is suppose to be invoked with. |
Filter |
Filter determines how Sybercron is suppose to filter the output results. NULL (the default) means there is no filtering. CGI means the results are sent back the database where those results are the results of this procedure. |
Disposition |
Disposition allows you to specify this application's disposition as inline or as an attachment. In conjunction with Content-Type you can
specify that an application opens immediately as an attachment. The default is null which is the same thing as inline. The following example
illustrates how to specify an attachment and its filename:
attachment;filename='vehicles.xls' |
Content Type |
This option determines the content-type of these results. Valid values include
application/html is a convenient way to force your HTML output as an attachment. Other allows you to specify your own content-type. Any content-type that is not text/html or text/plain is sent as an attachment. |
This section will list each parameter name to your stored procedure where you can specify what that parameter is suppose to be. If you leave this field blank, Sybercron does not pass NULL to this procedure. Instead, it does not even pass this parameter to your procedure. This is what you would expect if your stored procedure allows NULL or a default value on its own.
All Sybase parameter names are passed as varchars. In Oracle, Sybercron determines its attribute type and will pass varchars as varchars, numbers as numbers, and Booleans as Booleans.
You can control how these parameter names are displayed using the table CRON_KEYWORDS. For example, if you always use DEBUG as a Boolean value, you can arm this as a drop-down list of TRUE or FALSE. For more information, have a look at this table and I'm sure you'll figure out how it works.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Name |
The value of this parameter. |
This section determine when your stored procedure is allowed to run. You can specify a start date that tells Sybercron not to run this before this date, or you can specify a stop date that tells Sybercron not to run this after this date.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Timestamp |
This value determines the next time this procedure should be executed. If you do not specify a value for timestamp, Sybercron will determine this automatically. |
Start Time |
If not NULL, this field determines the earliest time this procedure can be executed. Normally this is NULL, but if you wanted to schedule a reoccurring job to run in the future, you would use this field to arm the earliest date this procedure can be executed. |
Stop Date |
If not NULL, this field determines the last time this procedure can be executed. |
For reoccurring entries--jobs that are suppose to run periodically--this section determines that period. You may, for example, want to run the same procedure each Friday at 8PM, or you may want to run this procedure once only next Friday at 8PM. The default is once only which means this procedure is run only once and discarded from the cron table.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Datename |
DATENAME determines when your procedure is actually executed.
DATENAME is one of the following values:
|
Day |
DAY corresponds to the day of the month. This value is meaningful only when DATENAME is MONTH or corresponds to one of the months of they year. |
Hour |
HOUR represents the hour of the day. |
Minute |
MINUTE represents the minute of the day. |
This section determines what to do when your procedure has completed. You have the ability to rerun it in case it failed or execute another procedure when it succeeded.
| Name | Description | Suspect |
If your procedure or script did not complete successfully, this option allows you to restart it once or restart it forever until it does complete successfully. |
|---|---|
Success |
This option allows you to execute another procedure when this procedure completes successfully. That procedure must be registered with the Sybercron Register. You would usually specify a Stop Time sometime in the past so that that procedure wouldn't be scheduled except through this facility. |