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Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan

Using Job Scheduler in SAP Cloud Platform [0]: Intro and Prep

This series of blogs intends to show in an easy way how to use the Job Scheduler service in SAP Cloud Platform

In this first blog, we’re going to prepare ourselves before we start with a first example

Overview


What’s that: Job Scheduler?

It is a tool.
It allows to define jobs in SAP Cloud Platform
A job can be configured to run regularly, or just once
A job triggers an action

What is it not?

Job Scheduler is not a framework
It doesn’t help to create the actions which should be executed
It’s just a tool to trigger anything which already exists

How does it work?

Job Scheduler is a cloud service in SAP Cloud Platform
There’s a Dashboard which allows to define jobs
A job is configured with a URL
This means your job would invoke that URL e.g. every night
A job can as well be configured with a CloudFoundry-Task

How does it work technically?

You have an application in SAP Cloud Platform
You add a REST endpoint to your app, which can be invoked and which does something
You bind your app to an instance of Job Scheduler service
Now you can configure Job Scheduler to call this endpoint every night (or whatever)
The result of the HTTP call is evaluated by Job Scheduler

More details please?

Job Scheduler requires that you bind your app also to an instance of xsuaa service (Authorization and Trust Management)
Note: the order of binding is relevant !

Which Features does it have ?

Job Scheduler functionality of triggering actions (It doesn’t help to define such actions)
User Interface to create jobs and define schedules, to view results, etc
Interface to manage jobs/schedules via API (REST, node.js, Java)
Details:
Support for Cloud Foundry tasks
Schedules can be defined with cron or human readable format
Jobs can run synchronously or asynchronously
2 Service plans: ‘lite’ and ‘standard’

What’s the difference between both service plans ?

Service Plan ‘lite’
Is only intended to be used in trial landscape.
Allows to create multiple jobs (or Cloud Foundry “Tasks”) with minimum schedule frequency of an hour (Non Productive usage).
Supports HTTP REST endpoints to be triggered by a job
Supports as well Cloud Foundry “Tasks”
Allows 15 schedules.

Service Plan ‘standard’
Minimum schedule frequency is 5 minutes.
Support for multitenancy
OAuth2 for REST API

Service Plan ‘service’
Don’t use
Deprecated since long time -> do nut use
Will be removed in the future -> so better not use
Remember: It should not be used

Note:
In case you face problems with display of Job Scheduler Dashboard:
Are you using old Microsoft browser?
Background:
Newer UI5 versions (from 1.88) don’t support the legacy browsers IE11 and Edge Legacy (Edge HTML) anymore (more info)
To solve the problem, you should use modern browser

Preparation

If you want to use Job Scheduler in SAP Cloud Platform, you need to create 2 service instances

Create instance of Job Scheduler service

Creating an instance of the Job Scheduler service is anyways the first step do do
It can be reused by all required applications

In SAP Cloud Platform, Cloud Foundry Environment, (Trial) go to your Space and open the Service Marketplace
Find the tile “Job Scheduler”

Note: if you don’t see the Job Scheduler in the Service Marketplace, you need to configure Entitlements. See Appendix

Click the tile Job Scheduler -> Instances -> New instance
Choose Service Plan as ‘lite’ (anyways, in Trial, only ‘lite’ is supported)
Parameters: fill in the following into the text field :

{
   "enable-xsuaa-support": true 
}

It looks like this:

Step through the wizard and provide an instance name of your choice, e.g.  jobschedulerinstance

Note:
The configuration parameter enable-xsuaa-support is always required, unless you want to trigger only CF Tasks (no REST endpoints)

 

Create instance of xsuaa service

After creating the service instance of Job Scheduler, the next task to do is creating an instance of Authorization and Trust Management (XSUAA)

However, this instance requires configuration which is a bit specific to the use case.
As such, it will be described later

Only one info: You should use service plan ‘broker’

Note:
If you already have a XSUAA instance that is bound to your application then you can also re-use it and bind it to the Jobscheduler. It might require the update-service command

 

Summary

In this blog, we’ve learned that Job Scheduler is a tool which can trigger actions,
e.g. invoke REST endpoints.
It can be configured to do that on e.g. regular basis

To use Job Scheduler, you need and application (with endpoint) and you have to bind it to service instances of JobScheduler and XSUAA
And remember that the order is important (order of creation and binding)

Next Steps

Recommended readings:
Part 1: First simple use case in Trial account
Part 3: Simple use case with authentication and authorization
Part 5: Long-running operations (async jobs)
Part 6: Troublemaking (get little help for 403 error)

See links section in the overview blog post.

Appendix: How to Configure Entitlements

  • Go to your global account, e.g. P123456789trial
  • Click on Entitlements in the left menu pane
  • Click on Entity Assignments
  • Select in SubAccounts in the DropDownbox e.g. ‘Trial’
  • Click on ‘Go’
  • Click on ‘Configure’
  • Afterwards one click on “Add Service Plans”
  • In the dialog you can search for Job Scheduler
  • Select Checkbox ‘lite’  (Available service plans)
    If the allowed service plan is grayed-out, then you might need to remove from other subaccount or, in productive environment, purchase quota
  • Click on Button ‘Add 1 ServicePlan’
  • Don’t forget to click on ‘save’
  • Go back to the Service market place you should see the Job Scheduler Tile

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      20 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Luis Benavides Andrade
      Luis Benavides Andrade

      Dear Carlos,

      Thanks for the summary of the main concepts of job scheduler, and how we can setup it in cf  instance.

      Regards,

      Luis Benavides Andrade

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Dear Luis Benavides Andrade ,
      Thanks for your comment, I'm glad if it was helpful and I hope Jobscheduler is useful tool for you
      In the meantime, there are more Blogs - just in case you need some more information

      Thanks and kind Regards, Carlos

      Author's profile photo Aristobulo Cruz
      Aristobulo Cruz

      Hello Carlos, I have a app for executing every 2 days a procedure of long duration from SAP Cloud Foundry, I'm trying configurate a task for using this app, but I have problems with the setting of the action parameter, I haven't could make it work, You have a example or documentation similary I whant to make through task, because understand that i can stop the app in the cockpit and the shedule task continue works, because I don't need the asociate url

      thanks for your help

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Aristobulo Cruz , I assume you're talking about CloudFoundry-Tasks, as described here?
      I haven't tried (yet) and creating a tutorial would take time. If you still haven't got it running, I'd need to ask for support myself.
      You can contact me via personal message
      Kind Regards,
      Carlos

      Author's profile photo Tobias Mitter
      Tobias Mitter

      Dear Carlos,

      we are using Job Scheduler and are missing an alerting functionality. A Job Scheduler without notifications is kinda missing the point 🙂 Can you give us some information on that? I believe I read somewhere that SAP plans to integrate all kinds of applications into altert notfication, I should think job scheduler would be integrated too?

      Thanks and best regards,

      Tobias

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Tobias Mitter , thanks for your comment, yes, you're absolutely correct. This is an enhancement which would round up the Jobscheduler functionality.
      It is planned, but will need some time.
      In the meantime, I guess it should be possible to add the required alert into the own endpoint?
      Thanks, Carlos

       

      Author's profile photo Taranam Dhindsa
      Taranam Dhindsa

      Hi Carlos Roggan

      Do we any tentative timeline when this will be available for customers as alert functionality from Job Scheduler would help .

      Regards

      Taranam

      Author's profile photo Vivek Singh
      Vivek Singh

      Hello @Carlos,

      First of all, thanks for the awesome blog. I am looking forwards to consuming the SAP Apis for our platform. But I am not sure, if the above content is something that i should follow.
      My use case is simple, from our platform, we wish to utilise the SAP apis(API that will expose certain docs that they have shared on the SAP application platform.)
      The above examples show how i can utilise there APIs but do you have any input/advice for my use case.

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Vivek Singh ,
      Thank your for your nice feedback!
      Jobscheduler is used to trigger <your> API endpoint on a regular basis.
      I'm not sure if I understand your question.
      You can write a personal message to me, to clarify further.
      OK?
      Kind Regards,
      Carlos

      Author's profile photo Pranav Nagpal
      Pranav Nagpal

      Hello Carlos,

      Can we trigger external APIs example from CPI? Does it support destination concept?

      Thanks

      Pranav

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Pranav Nagpal ,

      Jobscheduler is designed to be bound to an application in Cloud Foundry environment. Like that, Jobscheduler can automatically do the oauth flow.
      In the UI, you can enter any URL (as long as it doesn't require JWT token login).
      The UI also requires to enter an application, so this would require a trick/workaround (create dummy app)

      Kind Regards,
      Carlos

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi Carlos Roggan ,

      thanks for his blog series!

      I get in my trial account despite having one appropriate entitlement (already tried repeatedly removing the entitlement and readding it; and as expected when entitlement is removed the tile is not there)

      Service broker error: Service broker jobscheduler-broker failed with: Subaccount quota limit for specified service plan has exceeded. Please contact service administrator.

       

      Any idea what goes wrong here?

       

      Also can the job scheduler be used to start a CF app at regular intervals? I am bit confused by the CF tasks discussion...

       

      Thanks!

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Wolfgang Röckelein ,
      it seems that sometimes there are issues with service creation via cockpit.
      It works when using the cloudfoundry CLI on command line.
      Could you give it a try?

      Jobscheduler is used to trigger endpoint of a CF app. The app must be running. It cannot be started by Jobscheduler.
      In addition, Jobscheduler can also be used to trigger CF Task. This is different by nature.

      Kind regards,
      Carlos

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi Carlos Roggan ,

      thank you very much for your fast answer!

      indeed using the CLI immediatly worked.

      Thanks for the clarification regarding CF Tasks. Is there a complete example somewhere for Jobscheduler to start a CF Task as I think tasks are more the thing matching what I like to achieve?

      Regards,

      Wolfgang

       

      Re

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hello Wolfgang Röckelein , good to know that it worked ! About the CF Tasks, unfortunately, I'm not aware of any example.
      Kind Regards, Carlos

      Author's profile photo Wolfgang Röckelein
      Wolfgang Röckelein

      Hi @Roggan,

      meanwhile I found a blog from Marius Obert https://blogs.sap.com/2019/05/01/cloudfoundryfun-4-fetch-football-scores-periodically/ . I built a task and scheduled it following this blog and everything works as expected.

      What however still puzzles me regarding xsuaa : Does the task run with some authorizations and can I use them in an outgoing REST call?

      Regards,

      Wolfgang

      Author's profile photo Carlos Roggan
      Carlos Roggan
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Wolfgang Röckelein ,

      thanks for sharing the link, it will be useful for other readers as well (including myself)

      I don't fully get the question about xsuaa. As far as I understand, a CF Task behaves like a command that is started by Jobscheduler. As such, Jobscheduler cannot send any token. If the task is supposed to do a REST call, it would need to fetch the required token itself (e.g. it might be required to create service key of xsuaa).
      Hope this clarifies a bit?
      Kind Regards,

      Carlos

      Author's profile photo Armin Pohl
      Armin Pohl

      Hi Carlos,

      we currently use IBM product Tivoli Workload Scheduler to run our R/3 jobs... we are planning to migrate to the cloud in the next year... are you aware of any course that SAP has to learn job scheduler in the cloud environment. i wanted to see the differences between TWS and SAP Job Scheduler...

      i.e unix file based dependencies to launch the job, pager/email alerts if jobs fail. job dependencies on jobs and jobstreams. In TWS we have jobstreams where a set of jobs reside i.e. jobstream for Mondays that have 10 jobs in them and each one is dependent on the previous job completing successfully before the next one kicks off... also the Monday jobstream is dependent on the Sunday jobstream completing successfully before any of the jobs in the Monday jobstream can even think of kicking off. Any info from you would be much apprecated,

      thanks

      Armin Pohl

      Author's profile photo M K
      M K

      Hi Carlos,

      Can we schedule a Flowgraph/reptask using Job Scheduler. If yes then can you please guide me.

      Best Regards,

      MK

      Author's profile photo d rupireddy
      d rupireddy

      Could you please share the Document or PPT with me