Dependency Manager Batch Processing

A previous section (Dependency Manager Functions) described how the Dependency Manager supports the capturing of precedent change items in a system-wide batch precedent change set, and how the Dependency Manager contains batch processing to identify potentially affected dependents and recalculate them.

This section provides more details on the Dependency Manager's batch processing.

The Dependency Manager maintains control records on the database to point to the following batch precedent change sets:

the currently-open batch precedent change set (there will always be exactly one batch precedent change set which is open for accepting new precedent change items); and
the batch precedent change set which is currently being processed by the Dependency Manager batch suite (if any - only populated during batch processing; most of the time there is no batch precedent change set in this state).

These control records are fundamental to the behavior of the Dependency Manager batch suite.

Whenever there are precedent changes in "queue for batch processing" mode, then the application logs will show a message notifying the administrator that a run of the Dependency Manager batch suite is required¹.

The Dependency Manager batch suite is made up of these separate batch processes:

Submit Precedent Change Set
The start point for the batch suite. A lightweight single-stream process that submits the currently-open batch precedent change set.
Perform Batch Recalculations From Precedent Change Set
The heavyweight multiple-stream process that identifies the dependents which are potentially affected by the changes in the submitted precedent change set, and recalculates them. The time taken to run this process will vary according to how many dependent recalculations are required, and may be considerable.
Complete Precedent Change Set
The end point for the batch suite. A lightweight single-stream process that completes the currently-submitted batch precedent change set.

These batch processes are described in more detail in the following sections.

¹ The user who made the changes which were queued for batch processing will also receive an on-screen informational message advising that a run of the Dependency Manager batch suite is required.