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The Event Scheduler

Schedule Events to Occur According to a Designated Schedule

The Event Scheduler enables you to automate many processes in your database. You can:

  • Execute a Request

  • Import Data

  • Publish Data

  • Run a Script

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​Choose how often you want the Event to run – e.g., every hour, once a day, every Monday, on the first day of the month, etc.

Creating an Event

  • Go to the Admin menu and expand the Event Scheduler topic on the left of the window.

  • Click on New Event.

A new Event looks like this:

  • Enter a suitable name for the Event

  • Choose an Event Type from the pop-up menu. There are four Event Types:

    • Execute a request

    • Import Data

    • Publish Data

    • Run a Script

The display will change, depending upon the type of Event you selected. Each is described briefly below.

Select a Schedule:

Run at fixed intervals: Choose from Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, or Months. Enter the time span between each event.

Run at specific day/time: Choose from:

  • At a certain time each day (enter the time in 24-hour clock format)

  • On a certain day of the week (select the day)

  • On a certain date each month (enter the day number)

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The Event Types

Event Type: Execute a Request

This option works by monitoring a designated folder for text file containing instructions to execute certain procedures. When you choose this option, the view changes:

To use this feature:

  1. Create a folder on your computer or shared network drive that will be used exclusively for this purpose.

  2. Select that folder in the Event Scheduler window.

  3. When you want to trigger a request, create a plain text file containing the request info and save it into the designated folder/

    1. The name of the text file can be anything.​

    2. It must be a plain text file

    3. It must contain one or more lines. Each line represents one request and must be in a specific format:

      1. Request keyword

      2. A tab character

      3. Details for the request.

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Request types currently support are:

  • Run a Publishing Project: Use keyword "Publish Project" and then add the name of the Publishing Project you want to run.

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For example, to run a Publish Project named "All Categories" you would create a text file containing:

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Publish project<tab>All Categories

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After the request has been processed, CatBase will delete the text file.

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Event Type: Import Data

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Import Data event

You must set up one or more Import Formats first.

Choose the Import Format you want to use to import data.

Choose from:

  • Import a specific file: Look for a file of the same name, in the same location, each time. For example, each day your company's accounting system creates a report of updated product prices. It saves this report as a CSV file in a shared directory on your server. You could create an Event to open this file every evening and use it to update the product prices in the database.

  • Import any files in the folder: you can create a "drop" folder into which files can be dropped at any time. Select this option to monitor the drop folder and import whatever files it finds in there.

Delete file(s) after successful import: Select this option to delete the files after they have been imported.

Run a script after successful import: Click on the View/Modify Script button to choose a script to run after each file has been imported. We can create scripts to perform any kind of function - please contact us for more details.

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Event Type: Publish Data

To use this event type, you must first set up at least one Publishing Project.

Choose the Publishing Project that you want to run.

After the event has completed, the pathname to the published file will be shown in the Published data filename area.

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Event Type: Run a Script

Click on the View/Modify Script button to select the script to run. WE can create scripts to perform just about any task. 

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What's Next?

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