24 Nov 2012I’ve been working on the Quartz.Net eBook and I have put together an outline of what the contents will be once it is finished. I thought I would share the table of contents with you and I would appreciate any comments you might have. I’m especially interested in getting feedback regarding which sections are more interesting and important for you. I’d also like to know if there are any sections that are of absolutely no value so that I can cut them out.Please share your thoughts with me below in the comments or feel free to send me an email. Introduction What is a Job Scheduler?

1. Quartz Scheduler Example

What is Quartz.Net? Why Use Quartz.Net? 09 Nov 2012Quartz.Net ships with a plugin that allows you to schedule jobs using an xml configuration file. By default this configuration file is called quartzjobs.xml. In this post I will describe how to schedule a job with a cron trigger using this xml format.Here are the contents of the XML file: trueMyJobMyJobMy JobMyAssembly.MyJob, MyAssemblytruefalseConnectionString1data source=dbserver;initial catalog=db1;user id=userid;pwd=password;ConnectionString2data source=dbserver;initial catalog=db2;user id=userid;pwd=password;MyJobMyJobCron trigger for MyJobMyJobMyJobSmartPolicy0 0 2.?I’ll point out a few things of interest and we’ll call this post done, since as you can see the xml is quite self explanatory.1. Notice the element at line 14.

This is how we can pass parameters to our job via the JobDataMap. This JobDataMap can be accessed from context.

Quartz Scheduler Example

In this case we are passing 2 connection strings to our job so that it can do its thing.2. Notice in the trigger element how we are creating a cron trigger on line 28, instead of a simple trigger. In this case, the trigger will fire every day at 2AM.That’s it!

This example illustrates how to schedule a job with a cron trigger and with some data being passed in to the JobDataMap. 14 Oct 2012I don’t usually include personal topics in this blog but I think I will give it a try going forward.

This is my first post and it’s to encourage you to join me for this year’s Movember celebration.My commitment is to grow a moustache for the month of November and by changing my appearance, raise vital awareness and funds for men’s health, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.If you’d like to join the movement, visit the page and sign up. 09 Aug 2012In this series of posts we will cover the use of in Quartz.Net. In this first post we’ll start off by explaining what calendars are and what they’re used for.

We’ll also describe all of the calendars that are included with the Quartz.Net distribution. In following posts we’ll look at examples of how to use the different calendars and eventually we’ll build our own custom calendar. What Are Calendars?Calendars are used to exclude periods of time during which a trigger would normally fire.

Let’s say for example that we have a job that should run every workday, but not during holidays. To schedule this job we could use a CronTrigger to tell it to run Monday through Friday. To exclude holidays, we would then add a calendar to the trigger, specifying the holidays to exclude.

This combination of a trigger and a calendar would produce the schedule we want.Built-in CalendarsQuartz.Net provides several built-in calendars, such as the, the, the, the, the and the. We’ll describe these calendars in detail next.Annual CalendarThe is one of the built-in calendars in Quartz.Net. With the annual calendar you can exclude a given set of days every year. This calendar is useful for excluding holidays that always fall on the same date every year.

Let’s say you have defined a cron trigger that should fire every day. However, you do not want it to fire on Jan 1. In order to achieve this schedule, you would create a cron trigger that fires every day, and then you would add an annual calendar that excludes Jan 1 to the trigger.Cron CalendarThe is another of the Quartz.Net built-in calendars.

This calendar uses a cron expression to define the times to be excluded. Keep in mind that whereas in the the cron expression supplied is used to determine the times to fire, in the the the expression is used to exclude certain times from firing. As an example, let’s say that you have configured a cron trigger that fires every hour.

However, you don’t want it to fire during time. One way to achieve this schedule is to add a that excludes every day at noon.Daily CalendarThe lets you exclude or include a time range each day. To configure this calendar, you specify the time range that you want to exclude. For example, let’s take the siesta example from the CronCalendar and say that we do not want our trigger to fire between noon and 2 PM. In this case we would set our time range to be 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM.It’s also possible to invert the time range, so if we used the time range above and set the InvertTimeRange property to true, our trigger would only fire between 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM.Holiday CalendarThe contains a list of all the days that should be excluded from triggering a job. If you use this calendar, you must provide a full list of all of the days that must be excluded. Only full days can be excluded by using this calendar.Monthly CalendarThe can be used to exclude a given set of days each month.

This calendar lets you create exclusion schedules such as don’t run on the 1st and the 15th of every month.Weekly CalendarThe can be used to exclude a given set of days each week. This calendar lets you create exclusion schedules such as don’t run on the weekends, or don’t run on Mondays, for example.You set which days are excluded by adding values to the calendar.This concludes our introduction to Quartz.Net calendars. In the following post of the series I will provide hands on examples of how to create and add calendars to your jobs.