does anyone know if its possible to tell caster to run a job in deferred mode? I'ld like to have a big 2-hr job run 'in background' , taking up cpu time only when it wasn't being used by a live, higher priority command.

Hi Susannah

That is a good question... I would like to know the answer to that as well.

Actually, I was not aware that deferred jobs run in any kind of lower priority in terms of CPU usage or whatever. I always thought that deferred just meant that the process was running like any live process except the result ends up in the deferred list instead of in a waiting window.

Set up a second reporting server with a smallish queue, and make it the target of your report caster jobs.

jodye, yes deferred jobs run in a different section...you can look at your server console agents page...and the deffered jobs show up down at the bottom..and in theory, they stop their execution when another job requests cpu time...and they just hang out and wait until the cpu is free and off they go crunching again till the next wait. Caster jobs always run in the same way as regular jobs, when viewing the agents in the console.
Dhagen, thats my backup plan!

It's always been my opinion that Information Builders made a wrong decision to force the ReportCaster jobs to run in the DEFAULT service. By definition ReportCaster jobs are deferred. They run in the background with no end user waiting for a web page to load.

It is also my understanding that deferred jobs and ReportCaster jobs do not run at a lower priority.

If your WebFocus Reporting Server is running on z/OS you at least have the option of specifying "wlm_enclave_trname" in the service block and you can let WLM control the priority of the work done in that service.

In the Un*x environment I was able to convince Information Builders to do something similar. In a future release they agreed to add a new service keyword called "sched_priority". This will allow you to set the priority at the SERVICE level in the Reporting Server.

But again this does nothing for the ReportCaster jobs since they must run in the DEFAULT service.

We actually installed another instance of the Reporting Server in the same directory structure and gave it a different port number. We then pointed ReportCaster to it.

hmmm. but i don't swee how that takes any pressure off the production processors?

Try Configuring Report Caster on the Data Server tab so that the URL under Data Server > WebFOCUS Server List > Server Config > Use URL has the service you want to use. I think this will do the trick but All Report Caster Jobs will then be use this service. Another option might be to add another SERVER to the WebFOCUS Server List and assign the server there. EXAMPLE:
default = jdbc:eda:\\????????:8120;server=;
change to jdbc:eda:\\????????:8120;server=DFM_DEFAULT;

Let us know if this works.