1.0 Features
The following features are supported by Spring Batch 1.0:
Optimisation and Infrastructure
- RepeatOperations: an abstraction for grouping repeated operations together and moving the iteration logic into the framework.
- RetryOperations: an abstraction for automatic retry.
- ItemReader abstraction and implementations for flat files, xml streaming and simple database queries.
- Flat files are supported with fixed length and delimited records (input and ouput).
- Xml is supported through Spring OXM mapping between objects and Xml elements (input and ouput). Large files are streamed, not read as a whole.
- Database implementations of ItemReader are provided that map a row of a ResultSet identified by a simple (single or multiple column) primary key.
- ItemWriter abstraction and implementations for flat files and xml (the Sql case is just a regular Jdbc Dao).
- ItemReader and ItenWriter implementations are generally ItemStreams. An ItemStream encapsulates stream-like behaviour that is needed for transaction synchronization (mark/reset). It also provides the facility to be restored from a persistent ExecutionContext so that jobs can fail and be restarted in another process.
- For modifying an item before it is written, there is the ItemTransformer abstraction. ItemTransformer and ItemWriter are the two most common application developer touch points.
Core Domain
- Job is the root of the core domain - it is a recipe for how to construct and run a JobInstance.
- A Job is composed of a list of Steps (sequential step model for job).
- Job is also the entry point for launching a JobExecution.
- Step is the corresponding point for a StepExecution. Step is the main strategy for different scaling, distribution and processing approaches. The 1.0 release contains implementations for in-process execution (single VM). See below (under Execution).
- The most commonly used implementation of Step is a wrapper for an ItemReader and an ItemWriter. There is also a special implementation that wraps a Tasklet, which can be used to execute a single action like a stored procedure call.
Job Execution and Management
- A simple JobLauncher to launch jobs. Start a new one or restart one that has previously failed. This can be used by a command-line or JMX launcher to take simple input parameters and convert them to the form required by the Core. (Examples of both are in the Samples module.)
- Persistence of job meta data for management and reporting purposes: job and step identifiers, job parameters, commit counts, rollback counts. Execution attributes (a human readable represenation of the state of the job - can be augmented by developers).
- ItemOrientedStep - uses an ItemReader to obtain the next record to process, and hands it to an ItemWriter if it is not null. It can run a StepExecution in the same process (VM).
- Adjustiable exception handling strategies allowing fault tolerance through skipping bad records.
- Concurrent execution of chunks (a chunk is a batch of items processed in the same transaction) through the Spring TaskExecutor abstraction.
- Automatic retry of a chunk and recovery for items that have exhausted their retry count.
- Translation of job execution result into an exit code for schedulers running the job as an OS process.
- A set of listener callbacks that users can implement and register with a Step to add custom behaviour like footer records.
Samples
- A range of samples is available as a separate module. They all use a common simple configuration and extend in various ways to show the different features of the Execution module.
