24x7 Scheduler Job Database Corruption

We've noticed that our job database gets corrupted occasionally, and we recently discovered that it occurs when a dynamic jobs comes into the database while we are creating a new job in the "Job Properties Wizard". After that, every time a new starts, a message that says, "Job ###### cannot be found..." and says something about the database being corrupt. To prevent the problem, we know that we can be careful enough to prevent dynamic jobs from coming in when we are creating new jobs, but is there another way? Is SoftTree aware of this behavior, and what is the recommended fix/workaround?

When using the GUI directly, you are basically accessing the internal job database directly in a single user mode, which is supposed to be exclusive. There is no explicit file locking or job structure locking because this mode is intended for use on development systems for creating new and debugging existing jobs, in other words, the GUI should be used as a development environment. Because you are doing that directly on a production system the dynamic jobs running in the background are concurrently updating jobs from the other side and as a result sometimes you end up with conflicting changes and corrupted cross-references.

Here are 2 alternative solutions for avoiding such problems:

1. Before making manual changes, shutdown the scheduler and restart in with job engine disabled, using the /NOTIME command line switch. After you are done with changes and/or testing, restart the scheduler normally. Jobs are not going to start while in this mode and there will be no issues with concurrency.

2. Use 24x7 Remote Console GUI or 24x7 Web-based Management console to work with the scheduler in client-server mode. In this mode multiple users can access the scheduler concurrently and make changes. User changes can be applied to the job database concurrently with programmatic changes made by running background jobs.

Hope this helps.

Thankfully, it actually was on our test system. Your advice helpful. Thank you.

You're alwasy welcome.

I have the same problem but do not know how to repair the corrupt database. Can you tell me how to do this as I cant find anything in the manual or in this forum. Thanks.

The recommended method is the following:
1. Create new job database file (File/New/Job Database)
2. copy jobs from the corrupted file to the new one (Tools/Job Database Manager)

And definitely figure out what is causing job database corruption, find offending jobs or processes and fix them). For that check the job log and compare timing of events with the timing of corruption.

Also having a good backup from yesterday and a week ago snapshots always help with a good night sleep :)

Thanks for the prompt reply. The cause is the same as the previous post, I was creating a new job in the GUI when the dynamic jobs were created and then I started to get the errors. Having just read your post I went back into the GUI and re-opened the job database and when it gave me the database corruption errors I said Ignore (rather than Abort or Retry) and as if by magic a Corrupt Jobs folder appeared with the job that was causing the problem. I didnt need the job so I deleted it and then deleted the Corrupt Jobs folder and everything is working great again. I have to say that your product is so so clever and works really really well. I just love it. Any you are write I need to take more backups!!! Thanks for your help.

Just in case, there is a job template available to create a daily job to backup the job database file, logs and settings (zip them into a file with date suffix in the name)

You guys think of everything!!!