Task Assistant

The Task Assistant is a task scheduling product that facilitates the use of background processing on a CA Gen host and client/server encyclopaedia.

Do More...

• The Task Assistant allows you to schedule and execute tasks like model copies, downloads, model deletes or migrations as background tasks. This helps to balance the workload and resource consumption of your encyclopaedia by executing low priority or long running tasks overnight.
• It is available for all of the CA Gen Host and CSE platforms. It can manage tasks on multiple encyclopaedias, either on the same machine or distributed across multiple machines.
• User defined tasks can be defined to schedule customised tasks, like database housekeeping.

Faster...

• A benefit of scheduling tasks is that this reduces the contention on the encyclopaedia and therefore improves the availability and responsiveness of the encyclopaedia.
• Scheduling tasks improves developer productivity by avoiding the need to resubmit tasks when the model is in use by another task.
• Task dependencies can be defined to ensure that tasks are processed in the correct order. You can also set conditions on the dependencies, for example, only perform a model copy if a migrate succeeds.
• Recurring tasks can be defined to automatically schedule tasks (for example housekeeping routines) at pre-set intervals.

Easier...

• The Task Assistant is a client-server application with an easy to use Graphical User Interface. It utilises 'wizard' style dialogs to guide the user thorough the process of defining and submitting tasks.
• Developers do not have to logon to the server to execute the tasks from a ‘command line’ and do not have to learn how to write command scripts.

Under Control...

• The tasks execute under the control of the Queue Manager. The system administrator can define multiple queues, for example daytime and night-time queues, or queues for specific project teams.
• Multiple queues can be active at the same time, but you can also ensure that certain tasks are processed in a defined order thus preventing resource conflicts. You can also ensure that the tasks are processed in a given order by setting up task dependencies, for example that a download only executes on successful completion of a migration.
• Prevents unauthorised access to the CA Gen models, improving model integrity and preventing accidental or deliberate deletion or corruption of models.
• The Task Assistant also contains an Upload Assistant to automate the upload/verify process and automatically create/modify GuardIEn Change Request content and versioning.