Introduction to Quartz Scheduler

In this section you will learn about the importance of Job Scheduling in your java application.

Introduction to Quartz Scheduler

Introduction to Quartz Scheduler

     

Introduction to Quartz Scheduler

This introductory section will inform you the fundamentals of Quartz like its definition, its uses and its brief features.

Quartz Schedular is extensively used for Job Scheduling in java applications. Here, you will learn how Quartz Job Scheduler helps you to develop job scheduling application in Java. We will show you the examples to use it in console, desktop and web applications.

What is Quartz Scheduler?

Quartz is an open source full-fledged job scheduling framework that can be deployed on a wide range of applications including stand alone application, servlet container or embedded. It is primarily used for executing other software components at a pre-determined schedule.

Quartz is very flexible and lite job scheduler that continues working despite system shut down. It can work for different components at a time. Quartz can function stand-alone as well as incorporating with J2EE or J2SE applications.

Quartz enables the programmers to write the code in the natural way with no intervention. It is a feature rich framework that is extremely useful for simply execution of certain system process on given schedules.

Features

Quartz comprises from small java library (.jar file) that contains the core Quartz functionality and scheduler interface is the main interface (API) to this functionality. It needs little configuration to be set in the system. Simple scheduling process like scheduling jobs, unscheduling jobs, starting/stopping/pausing the scheduler can be done through it. 

How it works?

Quartz Scheduler automatically performs the scheduling operation once after it is configured and set up. If it is set for repetition, it performs the same. But before initiating the scheduling process, it needs to be instantiated (who'd have guessed?). For this, we can use a SchedulerFactory. After instantiating, you can implement the simple job interface to perform the scheduler executing process of your software components. 

Uses

Quartz scheduler is used for performing process workflow, system maintenance and providing reminder services within an application.

In the next section you will learn how to download Quartz Job Scheduler and then configure the development environment in eclipse.