About Submit Frames

A Submit Frame is a set of rules that control the repetitive execution of a process. When a Process Definition is submitted and a Submit Frame is used, the corresponding processes are restarted automatically by a Process Server according to the frequency defined in the Submit Frame.

Simple multiple executions of a Process Definition can also be achieved by specifying a recurrence. A recurrence is specified for one process when you submit it. A Submit Frame is an object that can be reused for multiple processes.

A Submit Frame is made of one or more Submit Frame elements defining the cycle. If more than one Submit Frame element is specified, the total cycle is a union of all Submit Frame elements.

Submit Frames are part of the Environment section in the navigation bar.

Restart behavior is used to break or continue the Submit Frame when something unexpected happens. When you break the Submit Frame, the process or Chain does not get submitted again according to the Submit Frame. By default, a Completed process or Chain will continue to get submitted according to the Submit Frame.

Built-in Submit Frames

The following standard Submit Frames are provided with Redwood Server:

Tabs and Fields

The following table illustrates the fields of each tab of Submit Frames editor dialogs.

Submit Frame Elements

A Submit Frame is made of one or more Submit Frame elements defining the cycle. If more than one Submit Frame element is specified, the total cycle is a union of all Submit Frame elements. If Submit Frame elements overlap, only one process is created.

This means that if a Submit Frame has two elements, every hour and every 3 days, for example, the process will run every hour of every day. In this example, every time a process in the recurrence has reached a final status (which does not break the Submit Frame according to Restart Behavior ), Redwood Server evaluates the Submit Frame based on the first process of the recurrence, checking the union of all its elements and determining the next date/time it can submit a new process for. The equation is as follows:

<submit_base_time> + (<n> x <amount> <units>)

• <submit_base_time> - the original date/time the first process of the recurrence was started
• <n> - the number of cycles required to get a date/time after the time now
• <amount> - the you entered in the every field in the Submit Frame element
• <unit> - the time unit you chose in the Unit field (seconds, minutes, hours ...)

The every 3 days element is irrelevant, in this case; no additional processes will be created based on this element because it overlaps every time with the other. Note also, that if the process takes longer than <amount> <unit>, in this case 1 hour, or for any other reason goes past the start time of the following process, the process will be skipped.

Another example: a Submit Frame has two elements, every hour during time window System_Week_WorkDay and every 3 days. With this Submit Frame, processes will run every hour during System_Week_WorkDay and every time the following equation results in a week-end day, the process will run on that day:

<day_of_original_request> + (<n> x 3 days)

In fact, in this example it means every third Sunday and Saturday.

Note: Changes to the Submit Frame will affect the current process if it has not yet started, otherwise it will be the next.

Tip: Use the Submits At tab in the Submit Frame editor and Submit Summary in the Submit Wizard to make sure your process is scheduled for the appropriate date/time.

Compensating DST Changes

Note that specifying a Submit Frame using <amount> <unit>, where <unit> is smaller than a day, it will not always recognise DST changes. If you want the Submit Frame to recognise DST changes, check the Preserve times checkbox on the Submit Frame. Alternatively, you specify a Time Window in the All openings of time window field; the process will be rescheduled for each opening of the Time Window.

Preserve Times will only be relevant for Submit Frame elements that satisfy all of the following conditions:

1. An hours, minutes or seconds type of interval.
2. The number of seconds evenly divides the number of minutes in a day or the number of hours evenly divides the number of hours in a day;.
3. No start time is specified on the Submit Frame element.

For hourly intervals, every2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12hours are satisfactory.

Submit Frame Recurrences

When you submit a process with a Submit Frame, the process and all subsequent processes based on this process form a recurrence. The processes of the recurrence have a pattern in common, which uses as the base time the original scheduled time of the first process. Note that this is the time at which the Submit Wizard was opened, the actual Scheduled Start time of the process may differ, depending on how long it took you to actually submit the process.

The default value for the presubmit count in the Submit Wizard is set to 1 when a Submit Frame is used, you can override this with the DefaultPreSubmitregistry entry. The default value is 10 when no Submit Frames are used. At every system startup, an Operator Message is created if this key does not exist or is invalid.

See the Managing Recurrences topic for more information on recurrences.

Note: Note that processes with a restart count do not wait for each other, Redwood Server simply makes sure that <n> processes in a non-final state are in the recurrence.

Note: When you presubmit more than 100 processes, you will get a warning. The maximum number of processes you ca presubmit is set to 5000.

Note: You cannot presubmit more than 5000 processes, as this can have serious consequences in terms of performance.

Generated Submit Frames

Submit Frames are automatically generated when you schedule a process with a recurrence pattern, as shown in the Submit Wizard, for example.

Note that the automatically generated Submit Frames are named SF_System_<number>. They will be modified as soon as the recurrence pattern is modified, Redwood would like to strongly discourage you from using automatically generated Submit Frames with other objects.

You edit generated Submit Frames by changing the recurrence pattern of the recurrence.

See Also

• Creating Submit Frames - video
• Defining Execution Times with Time Windows
• Using Recurrences
• Restart Behavior