This document describes the integration of Quartz Job Scheduler with VisionX workflow module. Basically, it explains how a workflow can be started by Quartz Job Scheduler.

We need following tools and libraries:

• Eclipse IDE (EE variant)
• Tomcat application server, 8 or newer
• Quartz release, 2.3.0 or newer
• Javax transaction API (javax.transaction-api-1.3.jar), 1.3 or newer
• Java Mail API (javax.mail-1.5.4.jar), 1.4 or newer
• JDBC drivers for datasources used in config.xml
• wfengineserver.jar
• jvx.jar
• appsclient.jar

First, create a new dynamic web project in Eclipse IDE. After that, add all Quartz libraries from the quartz_install/lib folder to your web library folder WebContent/WEB-INF/lib. You will also need to add Javax transaction API, Java Mail API, JDBC drivers, wfengineserver.jar, jvx.jar and appsclient.jar to your web library folder.

After your dependencies are configured, create a new Java package in the src folder of the project. Set com.sibvisions.quartz as name. Create a new Java class in this package. The name of the class should be WorkflowJob.

Use following source code:

public class WorkflowJob implements Job 
{
    public void execute(JobExecutionContext context) throws JobExecutionException 
    {     
        JobDataMap jobDataMap = context.getJobDetail().getJobDataMap();
 
        try
        {    
            // start workflow
            WorkflowEngine.getWorkflowEngine("QuartzIntegration").startWorkflow("quartz", 
                                                                                BigDecimal.valueOf(jobDataMap.getInt("workflowId")), 
                                                                                new Object[] { jobDataMap.getString("mailTo") });
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            LoggerFactory.getLogger(WorkflowJob.class).error(ex); 
        }
    }
}                                                                            

The WorkflowJob is a simple Java class, that instantiates WorkflowEngine for a specific application (QuartzIntegration) and starts workflow for a specific user (quartz) with configured workflow ID and email parameter. The configuration of parameters will be explained later.

To complete our example, we need to start the Quartz Scheduler. To do this, add following to your Deploymentdescriptor in WebContent/WEB-INF/web.xml:

<listener>
    <listener-class>org.quartz.ee.servlet.QuartzInitializerListener</listener-class>
  </listener>

Now it's time to configure the Quartz job. To do this, create the folder classes in WebContent/WEB-INF if missing. In WebContent/WEB-INF/classes create quartz.properties file with following content:

org.quartz.threadPool.threadCount=5

org.quartz.plugin.jobInitializer.class=org.quartz.plugins.xml.XMLSchedulingDataProcessorPlugin
org.quartz.plugin.jobInitializer.fileNames=quartz_data.xml
org.quartz.plugin.jobInitializer.wrapInUserTransaction=false

In WebContent/WEB-INF/classes create quartz_data.xml with following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 
<job-scheduling-data
    xmlns="http://www.quartz-scheduler.org/xml/JobSchedulingData"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.quartz-scheduler.org/xml/JobSchedulingData http://www.quartz-scheduler.org/xml/job_scheduling_data_2_0.xsd"
    version="1.8">
 
    <schedule>
        <job>
            <name>WorkflowJob</name>
            <job-class>com.sibvisions.quartz.WorkflowJob</job-class>
            <job-data-map>
               <entry>
                   <key>mailTo</key>
                   <value>jozef.dorko@sibvisions.com</value>
               </entry>
               <entry>
                   <key>workflowId</key>
                   <value>133</value>
               </entry>
           </job-data-map>
        </job>
        <trigger>
            <cron>
                <name>WorkflowJob</name>
                <job-name>WorkflowJob</job-name>
                <cron-expression>0/10 * * * * ?</cron-expression>
            </cron>
        </trigger>
    </schedule>
 
</job-scheduling-data>

As you can see, we pass two parameters (mailTo, workflowId) to the job class. Quartz will use configured trigger and starts our job every ten seconds.

Now, the job configuration is done, and Quartz will start our job. The last step is datasource configuration for your workflow engine.

The datasource is needed to run a workflow. It will be configured via config.xml. To get everything in place, create the folder structure:

WebContent
  |- WEB-INF
      |- rad
          |- apps
              |- QuartzIntegration              

This is a standard JVx application structure. It is very important that the folder QuartzIntegration exists because this is the application name used in our WorkflowJob class:

WorkflowEngine.getWorkflowEngine("QuartzIntegration")

Put the config.xml in folder WebContent/WEB-INF/rad/apps/QuartzIntegration The file contains the application configuration, e.g:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 
<application>
  <securitymanager>
    <class>com.sibvisions.rad.server.security.DBSecurityManager</class>
    <accesscontroller>com.sibvisions.apps.server.object.DBWorkScreenAccess</accesscontroller>
    <passwordalgorithm>SHA</passwordalgorithm>
    <database datasource="oracle_project"/>
  </securitymanager>
  <datasource>
    <db name="oracle">
      <url>jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:xe</url>
      <username>appl</username>
      <password>appl</password>
    </db>
    <db name="oracle_project">
      <url>jdbc:oracle:thin:@192.168.1.35:1521:xe</url>
      <username>job</username>
      <password>job</password>
    </db>
  </datasource>
  <mail>
    <smtp>
      <host>mail.server.com</host>
      <port>587</port>
      <username></username>
      <password></password>
      <tlsenabled>true</tlsenabled>
      <defaultsender>Quartz Job &lt;noreply@server.com&gt;</defaultsender>
    </smtp>
  </mail>
</application>

If you want to see some details about job execution, you should configure logging. Simply create a file with the name log4j.xml in the src folder of your Eclipse project. Put following content into it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE log4j:configuration SYSTEM "log4j.dtd">
 
<log4j:configuration xmlns:log4j="http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/">
 
  <appender name="default" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
    <param name="target" value="System.out"/>
    <layout class="org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout">
      <param name="ConversionPattern" value="[%p] %d{dd MMM hh:mm:ss.SSS aa} %t [%c]%n%m%n%n"/>
    </layout>
  </appender>
 
 <logger name="org.quartz">
   <level value="info" />
 </logger>
 
  <root>
    <level value="info" />
    <appender-ref ref="default" />
  </root>
 
 
</log4j:configuration>

Now you're ready.

You have two options to test the Quartz job. First, use Eclipse to export the project as war file. This file can be deployed manually to any Java application server.

The second option is to run an embedded application server directly in Eclipse. To do this, configure an application server and add your project to this server. This makes it possible to debug your code and test if everything works as expected.