VB - Set a timer to a windows service every half an hour - vb.net

I was able to build a windows service using a timer that executes a function every 30 minutes.
I want that this function to be executed every half an hour, for example. 00:00, 00:30, 01:00.
It can do that now but I have to start the service for example at 14:00 so it follows this pattern (each 30 minutes).
I want to automate this so if I start the service 14:08 it will still execute at 14:30 and not 14:38.
Extra information:
This is the function I use for the timer
oTimer = New Timer()
oTimer.Interval = 900000
AddHandler oTimer.Elapsed, AddressOf OnTimer

I recommend using either a windows scheduled task or a timed scheduling library such as Quartz.Net. That said this requirement is simple enough that you can quickly built this yourself.
Timers have a due time. This is the time it takes until the first tick. After that the interval time will be used. Set the due time to the difference between now and the next execution (in your case TimeSpan.FromMinutes(30 - 08)).
You can also use a loop:
CancellationToken ct = ...; //Signal this token when you want to shut down the service
while (true) {
var nextDueTime = CalculateDueTime();
var delay = nextDueTime - DateTime.UtcNow;
try {
await Task.Delay(delay, ct);
}
catch (OperationCancelledException) {
break;
}
DoWork(ct);
}
The loop solution is attractive because it avoid typical timer problems such as concurrent ticks and ticks arriving after the timer was stopped.

Related

How to add 2 minutes delay between jobs in a queue?

I am using Hangfire in ASP.NET Core with a server that has 20 workers, which means 20 jobs can be enqueued at the same time.
What I need is to enqueue them one by one with 2 minutes delay between each one and another. Each job can take 1-45 minutes, but I don't have a problem running jobs concurrently, but I do have a problem starting 20 jobs at the same time. That's why changing the worker count to 1 is not practical for me (this will slow the process a lot).
The idea is that I just don't want 2 jobs to run at the same second since this may make some conflicts in my logic, but if the second job started 2 minutes after the first one, then I am good.
How can I achieve that?
You can use BackgroundJob.Schedule() to run your job run at a specific time:
BackgroundJob.Schedule(() => Console.WriteLine("Hello"), dateTimeToExecute);
Based on that set a date for the first job to execute, and then increase this date to 2 minutes for each new job.
Something like this:
var dateStartDate = DateTime.Now;
foreach (var j in listOfjobsToExecute)
{
BackgroundJob.Schedule(() => j.Run(), dateStartDate);
dateStartDate = dateStartDate.AddMinutes(2);
}
See more here:
https://docs.hangfire.io/en/latest/background-methods/calling-methods-with-delay.html?highlight=delay

Testing Flink window

I have a simple Flink application, which sums up the events with the same id and timestamp within the last minute:
DataStream<String> input = env
.addSource(consumerProps)
.uid("app");
DataStream<Pixel> pixels = input.map(record -> mapper.readValue(record, Pixel.class));
pixels
.keyBy("id", "timestampRoundedToMinutes")
.timeWindow(Time.minutes(1))
.sum("constant")
.addSink(dynamoDBSink);
env.execute(jobName);
I am trying to test this application with the recommended approach in documentation. I also have looked at this stackoverflow question, but adding the sink hadn't helped.
I do have a #ClassRule as recommended in my test class. The function looks like this:
StreamExecutionEnvironment env=StreamExecutionEnvironment.getExecutionEnvironment();
env.setParallelism(2);
CollectSink.values.clear();
Pixel testPixel1 = Pixel.builder().id(1).timestampRoundedToMinutes("202002261219").constant(1).build();
Pixel testPixel2 = Pixel.builder().id(2).timestampRoundedToMinutes("202002261220").constant(1).build();
Pixel testPixel3 = Pixel.builder().id(1).timestampRoundedToMinutes("202002261219").constant(1).build();
Pixel testPixel4 = Pixel.builder().id(3).timestampRoundedToMinutes("202002261220").constant(1).build();
env.fromElements(testPixel1, testPixel2, testPixel3, testPixel4)
.keyBy("id","timestampRoundedToMinutes")
.timeWindow(Time.minutes(1))
.sum("constant")
.addSink(new CollectSink());
JobExecutionResult result = env.execute("AggregationTest");
assertNotEquals(0, CollectSink.values.size());
CollectSink is copied from documentation.
What am I doing wrong? Is there also a simple way to test the application with embedded kafka?
Thanks!
The reason why your test is failing is because the window is never triggered. The job runs to completion before the window can reach the end of its allotted time.
The reason for this has to do with the way you are working with time. By specifying
.keyBy("id","timestampRoundedToMinutes")
you are arranging for all the events for the same id and with timestamps within the same minute to be in the same window. But because you are using processing time windowing (rather than event time windowing), your windows won't close until the time of day when the test is running crosses over the boundary from one minute to the next. With only four events to process, your job is highly unlikely to run long enough for this to happen.
What you should do instead is something more like this: set the time characteristic to event time, and provide a timestamp extractor and watermark assigner. Note that by doing this, there's no need to key by the timestamp rounded to minute boundaries -- that's part of what event time windows do anyway.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
...
env.setStreamTimeCharacteristic(TimeCharacteristic.EventTime);
env.fromElements(testPixel1, testPixel2, testPixel3, testPixel4)
.assignTimestampsAndWatermarks(new TimestampsAndWatermarks())
.keyBy("id")
.timeWindow(Time.minutes(1))
.sum("constant")
.addSink(new CollectSink());
env.execute();
}
private static class TimestampsAndWatermarks extends BoundedOutOfOrdernessTimestampExtractor<Event> {
public TimestampsAndWatermarks() {
super(/* delay to handle out-of-orderness */);
}
#Override
public long extractTimestamp(Event event) {
return event.timestamp;
}
}
See the documentation and the tutorials for more about event time, watermarks, and windowing.

JMeter - Avoid threads abrupt shutdown

I have a testPlan that has several transacion controllers (that I called UserJourneys) and each one is composed by some samplers (JourneySteps).
The problem I'm facing is that once the test duration is over, Jmeter kills all the threads and does not take into consideration if they are in the middle of a UserJourney (transaction controller) or not.
On some of these UJs I do some important stuff that needs to be done before the user logs in again, otherwise the next iterations (new test run) will fail.
The question is: Is there a way to tell to JMeter that it needs to wait every thread reach the end of its flow/UJ/TransactionController before killing it?
Thanks in advance!
This is not possible as of version 5.1.1, you should request an enhancement at:
https://jmeter.apache.org/issues.html
The solution is to add as first child of Thread Group a Flow Control Action containing a JSR223 PreProcessor:
The JSR223 PreProcessor will contain this groovy code:
import org.apache.jorphan.util.JMeterStopTestException;
long startDate = vars["TESTSTART.MS"].toLong();
long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
String testDuration = Parameters;
if ((now - startDate) >= testDuration.toLong()) {
log.info("Test duration "+testDuration+" reached");
throw new JMeterStopTestException("Test duration "+testDuration+"reached ");
} else {
log.info("Test duration "+testDuration+" not reached yet");
}
And be configured like this:
Finally you can set the property testDuration in millis on command line using:
-JtestDuration=3600000
If you'd like to learn more about JMeter and performance testing this book can help you.

Why is the first SaveChanges slower than following calls?

I'm investigating some performance problems in an experimental scheduling application I'm working on. I found that calls to session.SaveChanges() were pretty slow, so I wrote a simple test.
Can you explain why the first iteration of the loop takes 200ms and subsequent loop 1-2 ms? How I can I leverage this in my application (I don't mind the first call to be this slow if all subsequent calls are quick)?
private void StoreDtos()
{
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
{
StoreNewSchedule();
}
}
private void StoreNewSchedule()
{
var sw = Stopwatch.StartNew();
using (var session = DocumentStore.OpenSession())
{
session.Store(NewSchedule());
session.SaveChanges();
}
Console.WriteLine("Persisting schedule took {0} ms.",
sw.ElapsedMilliseconds);
}
Output is:
Persisting schedule took 189 ms. // first time
Persisting schedule took 2 ms. // second time
Persisting schedule took 1 ms. // ... etc
Above is for an in-memory database. Using a http connection to a Raven DB instance (on the same machine), I get similar results. The first call takes noticeably more time:
Persisting schedule took 1116 ms.
Persisting schedule took 37 ms.
Persisting schedule took 14 ms.
On Github: RavenDB 2.0 testcode and RavenDB 2.5 testcode.
The very first time that you call RavenDB, there are several things that have to happen.
We need to prepare the serializers for your entities, which takes time.
We need to create the TCP connection to the server.
On the next calls, we can reuse the connection that is already open and the created serializers.

Scalable delayed task execution with Redis

I need to design a Redis-driven scalable task scheduling system.
Requirements:
Multiple worker processes.
Many tasks, but long periods of idleness are possible.
Reasonable timing precision.
Minimal resource waste when idle.
Should use synchronous Redis API.
Should work for Redis 2.4 (i.e. no features from upcoming 2.6).
Should not use other means of RPC than Redis.
Pseudo-API: schedule_task(timestamp, task_data). Timestamp is in integer seconds.
Basic idea:
Listen for upcoming tasks on list.
Put tasks to buckets per timestamp.
Sleep until the closest timestamp.
If a new task appears with timestamp less than closest one, wake up.
Process all upcoming tasks with timestamp ≤ now, in batches (assuming
that task execution is fast).
Make sure that concurrent worker wouldn't process same tasks. At the same time, make sure that no tasks are lost if we crash while processing them.
So far I can't figure out how to fit this in Redis primitives...
Any clues?
Note that there is a similar old question: Delayed execution / scheduling with Redis? In this new question I introduce more details (most importantly, many workers). So far I was not able to figure out how to apply old answers here — thus, a new question.
Here's another solution that builds on a couple of others [1]. It uses the redis WATCH command to remove the race condition without using lua in redis 2.6.
The basic scheme is:
Use a redis zset for scheduled tasks and redis queues for ready to run tasks.
Have a dispatcher poll the zset and move tasks that are ready to run into the redis queues. You may want more than 1 dispatcher for redundancy but you probably don't need or want many.
Have as many workers as you want which do blocking pops on the redis queues.
I haven't tested it :-)
The foo job creator would do:
def schedule_task(queue, data, delay_secs):
# This calculation for run_at isn't great- it won't deal well with daylight
# savings changes, leap seconds, and other time anomalies. Improvements
# welcome :-)
run_at = time.time() + delay_secs
# If you're using redis-py's Redis class and not StrictRedis, swap run_at &
# the dict.
redis.zadd(SCHEDULED_ZSET_KEY, run_at, {'queue': queue, 'data': data})
schedule_task('foo_queue', foo_data, 60)
The dispatcher(s) would look like:
while working:
redis.watch(SCHEDULED_ZSET_KEY)
min_score = 0
max_score = time.time()
results = redis.zrangebyscore(
SCHEDULED_ZSET_KEY, min_score, max_score, start=0, num=1, withscores=False)
if results is None or len(results) == 0:
redis.unwatch()
sleep(1)
else: # len(results) == 1
redis.multi()
redis.rpush(results[0]['queue'], results[0]['data'])
redis.zrem(SCHEDULED_ZSET_KEY, results[0])
redis.exec()
The foo worker would look like:
while working:
task_data = redis.blpop('foo_queue', POP_TIMEOUT)
if task_data:
foo(task_data)
[1] This solution is based on not_a_golfer's, one at http://www.saltycrane.com/blog/2011/11/unique-python-redis-based-queue-delay/, and the redis docs for transactions.
You didn't specify the language you're using. You have at least 3 alternatives of doing this without writing a single line of code in Python at least.
Celery has an optional redis broker.
http://celeryproject.org/
resque is an extremely popular redis task queue using redis.
https://github.com/defunkt/resque
RQ is a simple and small redis based queue that aims to "take the good stuff from celery and resque" and be much simpler to work with.
http://python-rq.org/
You can at least look at their design if you can't use them.
But to answer your question - what you want can be done with redis. I've actually written more or less that in the past.
EDIT:
As for modeling what you want on redis, this is what I would do:
queuing a task with a timestamp will be done directly by the client - you put the task in a sorted set with the timestamp as the score and the task as the value (see ZADD).
A central dispatcher wakes every N seconds, checks out the first timestamps on this set, and if there are tasks ready for execution, it pushes the task to a "to be executed NOW" list. This can be done with ZREVRANGEBYSCORE on the "waiting" sorted set, getting all items with timestamp<=now, so you get all the ready items at once. pushing is done by RPUSH.
workers use BLPOP on the "to be executed NOW" list, wake when there is something to work on, and do their thing. This is safe since redis is single threaded, and no 2 workers will ever take the same task.
once finished, the workers put the result back in a response queue, which is checked by the dispatcher or another thread. You can add a "pending" bucket to avoid failures or something like that.
so the code will look something like this (this is just pseudo code):
client:
ZADD "new_tasks" <TIMESTAMP> <TASK_INFO>
dispatcher:
while working:
tasks = ZREVRANGEBYSCORE "new_tasks" <NOW> 0 #this will only take tasks with timestamp lower/equal than now
for task in tasks:
#do the delete and queue as a transaction
MULTI
RPUSH "to_be_executed" task
ZREM "new_tasks" task
EXEC
sleep(1)
I didn't add the response queue handling, but it's more or less like the worker:
worker:
while working:
task = BLPOP "to_be_executed" <TIMEOUT>
if task:
response = work_on_task(task)
RPUSH "results" response
EDit: stateless atomic dispatcher :
while working:
MULTI
ZREVRANGE "new_tasks" 0 1
ZREMRANGEBYRANK "new_tasks" 0 1
task = EXEC
#this is the only risky place - you can solve it by using Lua internall in 2.6
SADD "tmp" task
if task.timestamp <= now:
MULTI
RPUSH "to_be_executed" task
SREM "tmp" task
EXEC
else:
MULTI
ZADD "new_tasks" task.timestamp task
SREM "tmp" task
EXEC
sleep(RESOLUTION)
If you're looking for ready solution on Java. Redisson is right for you. It allows to schedule and execute tasks (with cron-expression support) in distributed way on Redisson nodes using familiar ScheduledExecutorService api and based on Redis queue.
Here is an example. First define a task using java.lang.Runnable interface. Each task can access to Redis instance via injected RedissonClient object.
public class RunnableTask implements Runnable {
#RInject
private RedissonClient redissonClient;
#Override
public void run() throws Exception {
RMap<String, Integer> map = redissonClient.getMap("myMap");
Long result = 0;
for (Integer value : map.values()) {
result += value;
}
redissonClient.getTopic("myMapTopic").publish(result);
}
}
Now it's ready to sumbit it into ScheduledExecutorService:
RScheduledExecutorService executorService = redisson.getExecutorService("myExecutor");
ScheduledFuture<?> future = executorService.schedule(new CallableTask(), 10, 20, TimeUnit.MINUTES);
future.get();
// or cancel it
future.cancel(true);
Examples with cron expressions:
executorService.schedule(new RunnableTask(), CronSchedule.of("10 0/5 * * * ?"));
executorService.schedule(new RunnableTask(), CronSchedule.dailyAtHourAndMinute(10, 5));
executorService.schedule(new RunnableTask(), CronSchedule.weeklyOnDayAndHourAndMinute(12, 4, Calendar.MONDAY, Calendar.FRIDAY));
All tasks are executed on Redisson node.
A combined approach seems plausible:
No new task timestamp may be less than current time (clamp if less). Assuming reliable NTP synch.
All tasks go to bucket-lists at keys, suffixed with task timestamp.
Additionally, all task timestamps go to a dedicated zset (key and score — timestamp itself).
New tasks are accepted from clients via separate Redis list.
Loop: Fetch oldest N expired timestamps via zrangebyscore ... limit.
BLPOP with timeout on new tasks list and lists for fetched timestamps.
If got an old task, process it. If new — add to bucket and zset.
Check if processed buckets are empty. If so — delete list and entrt from zset. Probably do not check very recently expired buckets, to safeguard against time synchronization issues. End loop.
Critique? Comments? Alternatives?
Lua
I made something similar to what's been suggested here, but optimized the sleep duration to be more precise. This solution is good if you have few inserts into the delayed task queue. Here's how I did it with a Lua script:
local laterChannel = KEYS[1]
local nowChannel = KEYS[2]
local currentTime = tonumber(KEYS[3])
local first = redis.call("zrange", laterChannel, 0, 0, "WITHSCORES")
if (#first ~= 2)
then
return "2147483647"
end
local execTime = tonumber(first[2])
local event = first[1]
if (currentTime >= execTime)
then
redis.call("zrem", laterChannel, event)
redis.call("rpush", nowChannel, event)
return "0"
else
return tostring(execTime - currentTime)
end
It uses two "channels". laterChannel is a ZSET and nowChannel is a LIST. Whenever it's time to execute a task, the event is moved from the the ZSET to the LIST. The Lua script with respond with how many MS the dispatcher should sleep until the next poll. If the ZSET is empty, sleep forever. If it's time to execute something, do not sleep(i e poll again immediately). Otherwise, sleep until it's time to execute the next task.
So what if something is added while the dispatcher is sleeping?
This solution works in conjunction with key space events. You basically need to subscribe to the key of laterChannel and whenever there is an add event, you wake up all the dispatcher so they can poll again.
Then you have another dispatcher that uses the blocking left pop on nowChannel. This means:
You can have the dispatcher across multiple instances(i e it's scaling)
The polling is atomic so you won't have any race conditions or double events
The task is executed by any of the instances that are free
There are ways to optimize this even more. For example, instead of returning "0", you fetch the next item from the zset and return the correct amount of time to sleep directly.
Expiration
If you can not use Lua scripts, you can use key space events on expired documents.
Subscribe to the channel and receive the event when Redis evicts it. Then, grab a lock. The first instance to do so will move it to a list(the "execute now" channel). Then you don't have to worry about sleeps and polling. Redis will tell you when it's time to execute something.
execute_later(timestamp, eventId, event) {
SET eventId event EXP timestamp
SET "lock:" + eventId, ""
}
subscribeToEvictions(eventId) {
var deletedCount = DEL eventId
if (deletedCount == 1) {
// move to list
}
}
This however has it own downsides. For example, if you have many nodes, all of them will receive the event and try to get the lock. But I still think it's overall less requests any anything suggested here.